Rnordman

Here’s something scary, according to MECLabs & Magento’s 2014 eCommerce Benchmark, only 13% of those studied base their testing on extensive historical data.

The sad part is, the same study found that in almost every revenue group – with the exception the $0-10k group – companies that test changes based on extensive historical data were proportionally the most likely to be more successful.

Yet, in our own qualitative survey, I frequently see, “I don’t know where to start testing.” “How do I do CRO the right way?” & “How do I know what’ll have the most impact?”

Dear ConversionXL reader, please don’t tell me that you’re a part of the 87% (from this study at least) that have yet to embrace the ” Test changes based on actual data.” approach.

To Test Based On Data, You Must First Understand Your Data

To be fair, there may be other forces at work. Maybe you haven’t sold your boss on CRO, or there’s bureaucracy, or your HiPPO doesn’t believe in using real analytics…

Indeed, over half of the companies surveyed in the MECLabs benchmark admitted to having little to no guidelines for measuring performance through analytics.

Or, maybe your company is ready to embrace the testing culture, but you genuinely don’t know what data to look at to know where you should start.

In order to prioritize any sort of meaningful test, you must first understand:

1. Where Gaps Actually Exist Based On Real Data, Not Guesses or Perceptions

Above is a screenshot of what the first run experience of Patrick McKenzie’s Bingo Card Creator looks like.

“We can observe that there is a small drop-off in funnel completion between Dashboard and Create list (95.9% of users having reached Dashboard will successfully create their word list), but there are significant leaks between “Create list”, “Customize” and “Schedule print”. This is where I focus my efforts as a UX designer, as it is likely I can achieve big wins there…”

Breaking the overall conversion (downloads) into a series of steps like this helped him to identify where the smaller leaks in the funnel were, allowing him to make incremental improvements to one step of the funnel at a time – that is, if he chose to run tests on this funnel first.

Taking a “big picture” approach & looking at the rest of his data, he may have also found room for improvement in:

• Customer referrals
• High traffic/high bounce pages
• High traffic/low speed pages
• Specific countries

Knowing what to test first depends on how well you know your data & understanding where you’ll get the biggest gains with the least amount of effort. If other areas have potential for bigger gains & take fewer resources, that area should get higher priority.

This is what I mean when I say “knowing your data” too, it’s not just a matter of looking at everything from the surface level, but really striving to understand the different kinds of interactions that happen on your site.

Had Patrick said “I want to get more downloads, I’ll test my headlines!” he may have very easily broken things that were working for him and seeing no actual gains.

And yes, it happens all the time. According to VWO, 30% of the first tests run through their platform are calls to action followed by 20% of tests being headlines.

This wouldn’t be so bad, if there wasn’t also an underwhelming amount of research being performed. The majority of tests only had one hour invested from the initial research to making the test go live.

The problem with so little time being invested into the research process, even if there were a significant outcome that came from a test, there’s usually no understanding of why it was successful. We’re talking about persuading people & understanding the desires, needs & emotions that drive them to spend their money… It takes more than an hour folks.

Tell me honestly, how much time do you think I should invest in understanding what makes you want to buy?

2. You Must Understand How Much Traffic & Time It Will Take For A Test To Achieve A Statistically Significant Outcome?

Peep wrote an article that I think every marketer who wants to be taken seriously must read, that the #1 A/B testing mistake he sees are people calling their tests too early.

In it he says,

“You don’t want to make conclusions based on a small sample size.

A good ballpark is to aim for at least 100 conversions per variation before looking at statistical confidence.

If you have a lot of traffic, go for at least 250 conversions per variations. It’ll be more accurate if it’s 350-400 conversions per variation.”

What I’ve always found interesting about this is that it’s not trying to get a winner as quick as possible, but rather taking an approach where you can know with at least 95% confidence that the winner is actually a winner.

Moreover, Peep also recommends running tests for full weeks, and checking the Conversions Per Day Of The Week report in order make sure you’re not skewing your results.

So check your analytics, and get a sense of how long it will take you to get at least 100 conversions, then work backwards from there.

If for some reason getting to 100 conversions/variation is going to take too long, focus your attention on usability testing, gathering qualitative feedback, and understanding your visitors & their problems. You can still do conversion optimization with little traffic, you just need to focus differently.

Now, assuming you understand your data & how long it’s going to take to get a significant result (95% chance to win) here are 3 frameworks you can use to prioritize your tests.

Method 1 – Chris Goward’s P.I.E Framework

The WiderFunnel framework is about evaluating three different factors & assigning each on a score of 1-10.

Potential

“How much improvement can be made on the pages?”

Chris recognizes that all pages have room for improvement, but that you should be prioritizing your worst performers, taking into account analytics, customer feedback & expert heuristic analysis of user scenarios.

So, for example, I may take a look at the content landing page report, and identify the high traffic pages that get few conversions.

Looking at the report, I can find the pages where the majority of the visitors:

1. Don’t stay for very long
2. Don’t convert very well

From here, I can begin to narrow down which pages become a better testing priority.

Importance

Chris asks, “how valuable is the traffic to these pages?” then explains “Your most important pages are the ones with the highest volume & the costliest traffic.” In other words, if the page is performing terribly, but the there isn’t a high volume of traffic, or that traffic isn’t terribly expensive, then it’s not a testing priority.

But what if the majority of traffic is coming from organic search?

In this case, I would highly recommend assigning higher scores to the pages that are closely associated to what your core offering is. For example, we have articles that rank very well on the topics of value propositions, customer lifetime value, customer personas & social media marketing.

As an agency that focuses on clear, persuasive design, our content on value propositions & customer personas might take higher priority over social media marketing & customer lifetime value, as those aren’t what we specifically specialize in.

Later, we might chose to work out a partnership with another service provider, or do affiliate sales through other pages, but that would not come close to being a first priority.

Ease

“How complicated will the test be to implement on the page or template?

… A page that would be technically easy may have many stakeholders or vested interests that can cause barriers. I’m looking at you, home page.“

Internal politics kill conversions more often than anything else, so it’s absolutely critical to keep in mind which pages you’ll be met with the most resistance internally.

It’s also important to realize that not all changes are as easy as they seem. For instance, 99 high quality images from this site could end up costing you $1,980. Financially, that may not seem like much, but what happens when a single product page has 4-5 different images?

How much effort will it take to coordinate the shoot? Does the photographer come to you? Do you have to ship every product to them? What happens if you don’t like the photos?

These are all factors that go into the “Ease” score. You may find out that including a few testimonials on your product page is easier to implement & more cost effective – for now.

How to Rank Your Pages

With each piece of the prioritization framework – potential, importance, and ease – assign a score between 1-10 to help you understand which pages/elements are going to be the most beneficial & easiest to implement at a glance.

There are no hard & fast rules about the pages or tests to prioritize, but the idea is that you’ll be able to quickly identify where your low hanging fruits are in order to run successful tests & eventually get more internal buy in as more of tests are successful over time.

Click Here To Read More About The P.I.E Framework

Method 2 – Sean Ellis’ F.U.D.W.M ?

In this article on the Optimizely blog, Sean breaks down the process a little further.

He recommends mining your data to find your biggest opportunities. Start by digging up:

• Your top 5 highest bounce rate pages
• Your top 5 highest abandonment points in your funnel
• The top 5 most valuable pages to your business

Once you have these pages, you should move on to step 2 & understand your visitors needs. Try to answer the four following questions:

1. Why did they come to your website?
2. What stopped them from converting?
3. Did they find what they were looking for?
4. If they did convert, what almost stopped them?

As you might imagine, a good portion of this can be implemented as an automatic feedback loop, and many insights can easily be collected with a tool like Qualaroo – if you’re asking the right questions at the right points in the funnel.

Sean then recommends moving on to Step 3, where you pick the pages you’re going to test. Personally, I like using the P.I.E framework in addition to this, so I can select pages that aren’t going to ruffle anyone’s feathers right off.

He also recommends doing big tests that are going after “bold, targeted changes” rather than “meek tests” so you can test for impact.

Step 4 is about designing your first 10 tests. Sean recommends starting with:

• 4 Message Tests
• 4 “A-Ha” Moment Tests
• 2 Large Scale Design Tests

Being the host of Page Fights, I can honestly say there is never enough clarity in the message. If the data is suggesting the clarity isn’t there, then these might be good starting points for you too. Sean said that many users didn’t know about a free trial on a product he was selling, proving it happens to everyone

“A-Ha” Moment tests are at the point in the conversion funnel where once the user takes the action, they’re much more likely to be a valuable customer.

“For Qualaroo, Sean mentioned that visitors seeing their first set of survey results is very important for user retention and satisfaction. This could be watching an intro video, or something else entirely. Focus on getting your visitors to these moments faster

Step 5 is about measuring the outcomes and planning new tests as a result of your new findings. It’s also critical to note here that just because the page itself produced a lift, does not always mean that the test was ultimately successful.

For example, you may get a big lift for free trial signups, but if 95% of those customers end up churning, the test was ultimately unsuccessful.

For more details on Sean’s method, check out the slideshow below.

Method 3 – Bryan Eisenberg’s Plan, Measure, Improve Framework

Finally, there’s Bryan Eisenberg‘s approach, which I really enjoy because for some reason, it encourages me to dig more into the human element, rather than looking at our visitor feedback as “qualitative data”.

Plan

Bryan encourages you to answer these three questions before you run your test:

1. Who are we trying to persuade?
2. What action do we want them to take?
3. What action do they want to take?

What’s interesting about looking at it like this, is often times you’ll find that the action you want the visitor to take, and the action your visitor wants to take, aren’t necessarily the same.

For example:

http://t.co/4MWtYGdOa7 Key content requirements for product pages are: answer users’ questions, be direct, and help with product comparison.

— Peep Laja (@peeplaja) August 25, 2014

So like in the previous testing frameworks, the idea is not just to throw stuff out there, but rather to get as much feedback as possible from actual users, then respond with that feedback on whatever page or funnel you’re trying to improve.

Measure

The next part of the process is to design the test, and define it’s parameters for success. Bryan recommends asking three more questions:

1. What action do we want them to take & how do we measure it?
2. What page(s) do we test?
3. Where/How do we judge success?

So, for example, you may have noticed in the past that many of your existing customers say they signed up because of your explainer video, so the goal of your test may be to get more people clicking to watch.

You’d set up click tracking as an event in Google Analytics, then create a segment of video watchers/converters to monitor for a lift.

To get more people watching, you may try testing the video’s thumbnails, and you’d judge success by whether or not there was a lift in the conversions that come from video watchers.

image source

Improve

Once you have this data, the next step is to improve upon it. So for example, if there are more people watching the video and converting, what does the video cover that the page does not.

If that “A-Ha” moment in the video is due to a testimonial, or success guarantee, is that properly reflected on the page so it’s clear to the non-video watchers too?

Now that you have the data, what can you learn from it to make even bigger improvements?

Prioritizing Your Tests Using T.I.R

Bryan also recommends prioritizing your tests using the T.I.R format:

Time - How many calendar days, man hours, development hours etc. will be necessary for this test to have it’s maximum impact? “A score of 5 would be given to a project that takes the minimal amount of time to execute and to realize the impact.”

Impact – The amount of revenue (or reduced costs) that will change in the event of a successful test. Are you testing on the whole customer base, or just a segment? Are you looking at a 1% increase or 20%?

“A score of 5 would be given to a project that takes the minimal amount of time to execute and to realize the impact.”

Resources – How much are the tools, people, and everything else associated with this test going to cost? “A score of 5 is given when resources needed are few and are available for the project.”

He then recommends multiplying all of these scores together & start working on the projects that have the highest scores, as those will have the most lift with the least amount of time & resources.

Conclusion

So, even though the MECLabs/Magento study shows that the majority of businesses don’t have any sort of analytics or testing process in place, I hope that you, my favorite ConversionXL reader, are now in a better place to get a step ahead.

But, I’d also love to hear the challenges you face internally when it comes to having a testing process adopted. Let’s kick off the conversation in the comments & see if we can help each other out.

Many of today’s most well-known programming languages are old enough to vote. PHP is 20. Python is 23. HTML is 21. Ruby and JavaScript are 19. C is a whopping 42 years old.

Nobody could have predicted this. Not even computer scientist Brian Kernighan, co-author of the very first book on C, which is still being printed today. (The language itself was the work of Kernighan's co-author Dennis Ritchie, who passed away in 2011.)

“I dimly recall a conversation early on with the editors, telling them that we’d sell something like 5,000 copies of the book,” Kernighan told me in a recent interview. “We managed to do better than that. I didn’t think students would still be using a version of it as a textbook in 2014.”

What’s especially remarkable about C's persistence is that Google developed a new language, Go, specifically to more efficiently solve the problems C solves now. Still, it’s hard for Kernighan to imagine something like Go outright killing C no matter how good it is.

“Most languages don’t die—or at least once they get to a certain level of acceptance they don’t die," he said. "C still solves certain problems better than anything else, so it sticks around.”

Write What You Know

Why do some computer languages become more successful than others? Because developers choose to use them. That’s logical enough, but it gets tricky when you want to figure out why developers choose to use the languages they do.

Ari Rabkin and Leo Meyerovich are researchers from, respectively, Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley who devoted two years to answering just that question. Their resulting paper, Empirical Analysis of Programming Language Adoption, describes their analysis of more than 200,000 Sourceforge projects and polling of more than 13,000 programmers.

Their main finding? Most of the time programmers choose programming languages they know.

“There are languages we use because we’ve always used them,” Rabkin told me. “For example, astronomers historically use IDL [Interactive Data Language] for their computer programs, not because it has special features for stars or anything, but because it has tremendous inertia. They have good programs they’ve built with it that they want to keep.”

In other words, it’s partly thanks to name recognition that established languages retain monumental staying power. Of course, that doesn’t mean popular languages don’t change. Rabkin noted that the C we use today is nothing like the language Kernighan first wrote about, which probably wouldn’t be fully compatible with a modern C compiler.

“There’s an old, relevant joke in which an engineer is asked which language he thinks people will be using in 30 years and he says, ‘I don’t know, but it’ll be called Fortran’,” Rabkin said. “Long-lived languages are not the same as how they were when they were designed in the '70s and '80s. People have mostly added things instead of removed because that doesn’t break backwards compatibility, but many features have been fixed.”

This backwards compatibility means that not only can programmers continue to use languages as they update programs, they also don’t need to go back and rewrite the oldest sections. That older ‘legacy code’ keeps languages around forever, but at a cost. As long as it’s there, people’s beliefs about a language will stick around, too.

PHP: A Case Study Of A Long-Lived Language

Legacy code refers to programs—or portions of programs—written in outdated source code. Think, for instance, of key programming functions for a business or engineering project that are written in a language that no one supports. They still carry out their original purpose and are too difficult or expensive to rewrite in modern code, so they stick around, forcing programmers to turn handsprings to ensure they keep working even as other code changes around them.

Any language that's been around more than a few years has a legacy-code problem of some sort, and PHP is no exception. PHP is an interesting example because its legacy code is distinctly different from its modern code, in what proponents say—and critics admit—is a huge improvement.

Andi Gutmans is a co-inventor of the Zend Engine, the compiler that became standard by the time PHP4 came around. Gutmans said he and his partner originally wanted to improve PHP3, and were so successful that the original PHP inventor, Rasmus Lerdorf, joined their project. The result was a compiler for PHP4 and its successor, PHP5.

As a consequence, the PHP of today is quite different from its progenitor, the original PHP. Yet in Gutmans' view, the base of legacy code written in older PHP versions keeps alive old prejudices against the language—such as the notion that PHP is riddled with security holes, or that it can't "scale" to handle large computing tasks.

See also: PHP, Once The Web's Favorite Programming Language, Is On The Wane

"People who criticize PHP are usually criticizing where it was in 1998,” he says. “These people are not up-to-date with where it is today. PHP today is a very mature ecosystem.”

Today, Gutmans says, the most important thing for him as a steward is to encouraging people to keep updating to the latest versions. “PHP is a big enough community now that you have big legacy code bases," he says. "But generally speaking, most of our communities are on PHP3 at minimum.”

The issue is that users never fully upgrade to the latest version of any language. It’s why many Python users are still using Python 2, released in 2000, instead of Python 3, released in 2008. Even after six years major users like Google still aren’t upgrading. There are a variety of reasons for this, but it made many developers wary about taking the plunge.

See also: Why The JavaScript World Is Still Waiting For Node.js 1.0

“Nothing ever dies," Rabkin says. "Any language with legacy code will last forever. Rewrites are expensive and if it’s not broke don’t fix it.”

Developer Brains As Scarce Resources

Of course, developers aren’t choosing these languages merely to maintain pesky legacy code. Rabkin and Meyerovich found that when it comes to language preference, age is just a number. As Rabkin told me:

A thing that really shocked us and that I think is important is that we grouped people by age and asked them how many languages they know. Our intuition was that it would gradually rise over time; it doesn’t. Twenty-five-year-olds and 45-year-olds all know about the same number of languages. This was constant through several rewordings of the question. Your chance of knowing a given language does not vary with your age.

In other words, it’s not just old developers who cling to the classics; young programmers are also discovering and adopting old languages for the first time. That could be because the languages have interesting libraries and features, or because the communities these developers are a part of have adopted the language as a group.

“There’s a fixed amount of programmer attention in the world,” said Rabkin. “If a language delivers enough distinctive value, people will learn it and use it. If the people you exchange code and knowledge with you share a language, you’ll want to learn it. So for example, as long as those libraries are Python libraries and community expertise is Python experience, Python will do well.”

Communities are a huge factor in how languages do, the researchers discovered. While there's not much difference between high level languages like Python and Ruby, for example, programmers are prone to develop strong feelings about the superiority of one over the other.

“Rails didn’t have to be written in Ruby, but since it was, it proves there were social factors at work,” Rabkin says. “For example, the thing that resurrected Objective-C is that the Apple engineering team said, ‘Let’s use this.’ They didn’t have to pick it.”

Through social influence and legacy code, our oldest and most popular computer languages have powerful inertia. How could Go surpass C? If the right people and companies say it ought to.

“It comes down to who is better at evangelizing a language,” says Rabkin.

Lead image by Blake Patterson

It has never happened before. It has taken centuries (in fact, millennia) for today’s extraordinary situation to occur in the workplace. There are now no fewer than four identifiably different generations employed in enterprises and organizations around the world. That means that project teams may also now be composed of any mixture of representatives from these age ranges. What does that immediately spark as a thought – generation gaps? Project management application vendors like Clarizen, AtTask and Microsoft Project have studied the situation to find out more about the different work profiles of the ‘4 Ages.’

• Traditionalists. Born between 1922 and 1945, these workers have not gone into retirement. That may be because of economic pressures (they cannot afford not to work). But it may also be because they want to leave a lasting legacy at work. A strong work ethic, aversion to risk, long-term focus and attention to detail are among their qualities.
• Baby Boomers. Birth years between 1946 and 1964, they also want to put their stamp on their work, with an emphasis on career progression, relationship management, added value and involvement in decisions. A desire for personal growth is tempered by an orientation towards team-working.
• Generation-X. Entering the world between 1965 and 1980, they are more concerned by their work-life balance, while paying attention to results and demonstrating greater individualism. Self-reliance and informality also come to the fore, as they leverage natural propensities towards use of technology, creativity and flexibility.
• Millennials (also known as Generation-Y). Born in or after 1981, these workers could almost use computers before they could walk. They want meaning in their life and work, and cherish diversity, new skills and immediate access to information. Optimism, innovation, confidence and creativity underpin their activities.

See how different project management applications have developed functionality to address common requirements across all four generations, with a comparison between Clarizen and AtTask for example.

Impact of a 4 Generation Span on Project Management and PM Tools

Variety is the spice of life. It’s also the potential source of conflict. People may not be able to relate to others who don’t think the same way. Project management methods that suit one type of personality may grate with another. Anyone who has experience of team dynamics knows how much a balancing act can be involved in getting productivity to fire on all six cylinders. Traditionalists may be flabbergasted because they perceive Generation-X workers’ informality as a lack of respect of authority. Millennials may be bemused by the insistence of Baby Boomers to proceed rigorously step by step instead of using a little productive multi-tasking.

Project management applications that are confined to waterfall-only or agile-only approaches may simply discourage half the team from using them. However, Clarizen founder Avinoam Nowogrodski notes that the ‘5 Ts’ (transparency, teamwork, trust, tools and transformation) are necessary ingredients for good project interworking, whatever the age ranges involved. See how different applications address these critical elements in project management and as collaboration tools.

Fact or Fiction?

However, it’s no use investing in project management tools only to satisfy myths either. For example, it would be a mistake to assume that older employees are less tech-savvy. Microsoft Project research showed that Baby Boomers for instance embraced technology just as readily as Echo Boomers (or Millennials, by their other name). And the traditionalist segment is one of the fastest growing in terms of technology take-up. Liquid Planner points out that Baby Boomers may be more possession (software license) oriented and Millennials more subscription (cloud computing) oriented, but that both categories aware of the advantages of appropriate technology to help them work better.

Collaboration instead of Imposition

Likewise, the concept of team members self-selecting tasks instead of having them imposed on them goes far beyond the independence attitude of Generation-X. Each generation can be just as willing to join in this process. The difference is rather in the type of tasks they select. More mature and experienced project team members may prefer tasks with a higher profile and longer duration, where younger employees possibly favor tasks that give results directly. AtTask facilitates task selection by team members for this reason. Task management apps also have their own ways of accommodating different attitudes in different age groups.

Mindsets for Good Generation PM Management

Jen Howard of Clarizen suggests that three mindsets can help managers get the most out of a quadri-generational situation:

1. Head to the Cloud. This immediately opens the door to a shared platform for enhanced cooperation and collaboration. The advantage thereafter is also of yielding better results with fewer resources.
2. Use transparency for a unified way forward. Generations often agree readily on what to do; the differences of opinion are rather in how to do it. Technology that lets individual members as well as the whole team see what’s going on and how their contribution is helping can accommodate different styles without compromising end-results.
3. Liberate through technology. Or in other words, make technology serve your goals of a cohesive, productive product team, not the other way round. And in doing so, leave flexibility in the equation, so that team members can be as ‘plugged in’ or ‘unplugged’ as they want, as long as the overall result is improved.

Getting Generations to Work Together Today

Whether or not each member wants a positive collaboration is unlikely to be a function of their age group. What is likely to change between generations however is the time each one is prepared to allow for such a relationship to form. Traditionalists and Baby Boomers may be more generous, and Gen-Xers and Millennials less patient. See how you can now keep the different communications channels open through collaborative project management applications to help each project team member to reach his or her own collaboration Nirvana.

And remember! Free PM software trials are available for many of these apps to try before you buy.

Customer acquisition without marketing. Is that even possible in the business to business world? Not only is it possible, it’s what’s next.

If you’re a business to business (B2B) marketer, you’ve undoubtedly seen the “be human” and H2H meme. Funny thing is, humans have always been behind all those business product and service purchases. What’s not so funny are the continued fails in how B2B companies communicate, the experiences they create for business buyers and the unrealized marketing power of delivering awesome.

It’s time to shine a light on how B2B marketers can elevate their “human” approach to buyers and one of the best people to do that is Scott Stratten.

Scott is the president of UnMarketing. He ran his “UnAgency” for nearly a decade before solely focusing on speaking at events for companies like PepsiCo, Adobe, Red Cross, Hard Rock Cafe, Cirque du Soleil, Saks Fifth Avenue, Deloitte, and Fidelity Investments on social media and relationship marketing. Named a top social media influencer by Forbes, the Tweeple love Scott with over 160,000 people following his daily rantings. He’s also written three best-selling books including QR Codes Kill Kittens and his newest book: UnSelling.

In anticipation of the upcoming MarketingProfs B2B Forum conference (Oct 8-10 in Boston) where the emphasis is on “Marketing for What Comes Next”, this interview with Scott covers everything from customer experience to brand marketing fails to what Scott really thinks about Tumblr. It’s a great preview of his smarts and humor. Check it out:

Who is Scott Stratten? Which came first, the business smarts or the funny?

Business smarts. When I was 13, I had convinced my friends to clean up the dog poop in our backyard, since my mom said we couldn’t play road hockey until it was done. She said that was the point she knew I’d be an entrepreneur. Or a conman. I can’t remember, it was a long time ago.

I’ve always heard the best marketing investment a company can make is in their product. Is that true? Or is it an investment in customer experience?

I’m the first person to preach about customer experience, but if your product is terrible, I don’t care if you’re the greatest customer/community believer in the world, it won’t help. We always talk about the importance of social media, of being where the customer conversation is, but we need to tend to our own home first.

I once had a woman in Istanbul stand up after a talk I gave and asked “We have a lot of people on Twitter complaining about our product. How do we stop them?” That’s the problem. If people are angry on Twitter, you don’t have a social media problem, you have a problem with your product.

What’s the first thing most companies need to “unlearn” about marketing that doesn’t harm any kittens?

They really need to stop mannequin networking. Setting up shop online, in social media, and only broadcasting and scheduling/automating. It’s like sending a mannequin to a networking event. Sure, you’re “there” but you’re just not there.

Consumers are empowered to publish like never before. Does that make them competitors to brands or potential marketing partners?

What it comes down to is transparency in marketing, that’s where the consumer comes in. Marketing is no longer about what brand message the company wants to put out, it’s what the customer thinks. Good or bad. You don’t define your brand. If you want to know what your brand statement is, ask a customer.

People trust reviews more than commercials, by a huge margin. There’s a reason for that. I don’t stay somewhere without checking TripAdvisor. I don’t eat somewhere without looking at Yelp. Corporations like to talk about being transparent, but consumers are transparent when they talk.

Two brand marketing fails, go!

Nothing like leveraging the most successful fundraising event in history to take a shot at your competitors:

Samsung Uses Ice Bucket Challenge To Troll Apple, HTC, Nokia

Insert here any brand that used Robin Williams suicide as a PR opportunity.

What brand is your poster child for doing it right?

WestJet airlines in Canada. Great people, great social, great across the board. We highlighted them in the new book, UnSelling, and while I was going over the chapter on a flight with them, one of their VP’s boarded the plane, introduced himself to the flight attendant and rolled up his sleeves and helped with the drink service. It was perfect.

Let’s play social media word association. What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when I say:

Facebook – People from high school I never liked.
Vine – Makes my son cackle with glee when he watches videos. Who knew?
LinkedIn – People I use to work with I never liked.
Twitter – People I used to like, but now they schedule all their tweets.
Google+ – Lol
Snapchat – Something I’m not cool enough to use. Kids these days.
YouTube – The TV of today.
Instagram – Pics of food I never liked.
Pinterest – Great site, ruined by marketers.
MySpace – Tom
Tumblr – Great space being ruined by Yahoo!

Your keynote title at MarketingProfs B2B Forum is, “Marketing for What Comes Next. Expect the Unexpected” can you share a few preview concepts?

It’s Unexpected. Why would I tell you? Sheesh.

I am so happy you have become a member of the esteemed and mysterious “Marketers with Beards” Facebook group. I would like to name you honorary Grand Puba. Speech?

I’ve been waiting for this moment since I sprouted my first chin hair. It is an honour and a privilege to be along my fellow bearded men (and women).

Thanks Scott!

You can see and hear Scott Stratten in person at the upcoming MarketingProfs B2B Forum conference in Boston, October 8-10, 2014. He’ll be giving the opening keynote: “Marketing for What Comes Next. Expect the Unexpected”.

If you are a B2B marketer, I can’t recommend the B2B Forum enough. It’s a conference where you can actually get to know other attendees dealing with the same kinds of issues in B2B marketing that you are. You’ll also be able to connect with over 60 B2B marketing industry experts giving presentations and one to one consulting. Get Boston Oct 8-10 for MarketingProfs B2B Forum on your calendar, I know I am!

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2014. | What’s Next in B2B Marketing? #MPB2B Interview with Scott Stratten @UnMarketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

Good webinars can be a little like independent movies – they leave you feeling wonderful, inspired, and ready to take on the world. Bad webinars, however, are more like Michael Bay movies – after two hours, you begin to wonder how somebody could have possibly been paid to make something so unapologetically terrible.

If you’ve ever wondered how to do a webinar that people will actually want to watch, you’ve come to the right place. In today’s post, we’re going to look at whether you should even be planning a webinar, a checklist of webinar best practices, and we’ll also learn some valuable lessons from two of WordStream’s seasoned webinar pros along the way.

Should You Even Produce a Webinar?

Believe it or not, this is a question that most marketers fail to ask before diving headlong into creating a slide deck, crafting invitation emails and all that other fun stuff.

Here’s the reason there are so many painfully boring webinars out there: many marketers don’t produce a webinar because it will be useful to their audience, but rather because it will be a great lead generation tool. Unfortunately, not all content deserves a webinar, but that never stood in the way of a determined marketer with targets to hit.

Before you start creating slides, ask yourself whether what you’re offering has genuine value. If in doubt, think about whether you would watch your webinar. You might think that everyone will be ready and willing to drop everything and enjoy your irresistible hour-long webinar on supply chain management (or whatever it is you do), but remember that most people are too busy to stop what they’re doing and watch a webinar that doesn’t interest them.

However, when done correctly, webinars can be highly beneficial to your audience and a great lead generation tool, particularly for B2B companies. Here at WordStream, we hold at least two webinars every month, and approximately 10% of our new monthly leads come from webinar registrations.

Is a Webinar a Good Fit For Your Content?

Some ideas are better suited to the webinar format than others. For example, the following would be a good fit for a webinar:

• A detailed examination of a niche topic from a fresh angle
• A panel discussion of a timely, news-based issue in your industry
• A thorough, example-driven “how-to” tutorial
• An adaptation of a presentation from a conference speaking engagement
• An interview with an industry thought leader

On the other hand, the following probably wouldn’t make for a particularly compelling webinar:

• A minor product release or update
• A news-based webinar with little or no new information/opinion
• A broad, “content thin” webinar on a general topic
• A webinar focusing on a tired idea or concept (e.g. “content is king”)
• A straight-up sales deck/product pitch

Also, it’s worth remembering that deceiving attendees with promises of sensational content, and failing to deliver (or disguising a sales pitch as useful content), is a great way to piss people off and tarnish your reputation. If you claim that your webinar is truly amazing, be sure you can live up to your own hype.

Now that you’ve settled on an idea for a genuinely interesting and useful webinar, let’s talk about how to make it happen – and potential pitfalls to avoid.

Webinar Best Practices Checklist

There are two distinct aspects of producing a webinar that you need to think about – the technical side, and the content side. Both present unique challenges, some of which are easier to solve than others.

How to Do a Webinar: Content and Planning Considerations

1. Settle on a Specific Idea

Resist the temptation to host the most epic webinar imaginable about a general topic. Instead, choose a highly specific content idea that you can go into in great detail. This will make it easier to focus on the topic and minimize the chance of going off on tangents. For example, rather than running a webinar about paid search – a vastly broad subject – focus on a specific topic, such as bid management strategies.

Choosing a topic isn’t always as straightforward as it sounds, and sometimes, things don’t go the way you think they will.

“It’s difficult to predict how the content will go over with the audience,” says Kate Gwozdz, WordStream’s Partner Marketing Specialist. “Sometimes you think you have a hit and it ends up being a total flop.”

2. Choose the Right Speakers

Webinars need to be hosted by skilled, knowledgeable experts in their field. Otherwise, how can you expect them to speak authoritatively about your chosen subject? When selecting potential presenters for your webinar, ensure that whomever you choose knows the topic inside and out, and is comfortable talking on-camera. Subject matter expertise is especially important for fielding unexpected questions, which will almost certainly happen before long.

3. Pick the Right Webinar Format

Before you start creating your slide deck (and I know how eager you are to get started), you need to decide on the right format for your chosen topic. Is your webinar going to be hosted by a single presenter? Will it be an interview Q&A-style webinar with two speakers? A panel discussion with numerous guests and a moderator? The complexity of your chosen subject, and the availability of suitably qualified speakers, should inform your choice of format.

4. Think About SEO and Promotion

Just because you’ve chosen a webinar with great content and knowledgeable speakers doesn’t mean people will be able to find it effortlessly. Once you’ve settled on an idea, think about whether your topic has solid search potential. Also consider content promotion and how you’ll publicize your webinar. Are you going to email existing customers with a link to the invite? Promote it through social media channels? What about co-marketing opportunities with trusted partners – what are they doing to promote it? These are all questions you need to ask before you start actually producing your webinar.

5. Create a Kick-Ass Slide Deck

Ever sat through a meeting in which somebody simply reads from a series of dull PowerPoint slides? Remember how boring it was? Don’t make the same mistake with your webinar slide deck. Your deck should strengthen and emphasize the points you intend to make in your script (more on this next) – it should NOT be the script itself. Back up your points with as much data and evidence as possible, and make it entertaining. Remember, your audience will either be looking at you or your slides, so don’t bore them with a dry, bland slide deck.

6. Write a Strong Script

Without a script, your webinar is almost certainly doomed to fail. Even the most skilled webinar producers and hosts rely on scripts, because talking for up to an hour, even about something you’re passionate and knowledgeable about, is hard work.

A script is your compass, map and GPS rolled into one. It will help you stay on topic, and make keeping track of time much easier. Some people find it helpful to work on their slide deck and script simultaneously to avoid repetition and minimize the risks of simply reading from their slides.

“If you’re moderating or presenting, definitely prepare yourself a script,” says Chris McHale, WordStream’s Nurture Marketing Specialist and our resident webinar warrior. “There’s a lot of logistical things to think about, so even if you think you know what you want to say, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you forget once you get into presentation mode. Create a list of the questions as they come in so you can keep them organized. Lastly, relax! It can be a bit overwhelming running your first live webinar, but just have fun with it and do your best. The attendees are there to listen and learn, not judge.”

How to Do a Webinar: Technical Considerations

7. Choose the Right Webinar Platform

There are several webinar platforms to choose from, each of which has its pros and cons. Until recently, we used GoToWebinar by Citrix. Although this is a solid choice for smaller webinars, its limitations (such as a hard limit of 1,000 attendees and lack of support for integrated content management) prompted us to look for a better solution. Now, we use GoToWebcast, another Citrix product that offers more features and allows us to host larger, more interactive webinars. The size of your company and your attendee list will dictate how robust your hosting solution needs to be. (WordStream has no relationship with Citrix beyond being a customer. Citrix did not pay for this mention – we wouldn’t be that sleazy.)

8. Test Your Campaign Tracking

Webinars can be an excellent lead generation tool, but only if you set them up properly and test your campaign tracking parameters ahead of time.

“Make yourself a checklist of the steps you need to accomplish,” says Chris. “Ask yourself questions like, ‘Do I need to set up tracking links for my offers? Is this webinar for my customers or prospects? Is the webinar live time only suitable for a specific time zone?’ Once you figure out the targeting and segmentation, you can focus on the logistical steps.”

9. Use Headset Microphones or a Land Line Phone

Few things will ruin a webinar faster than poor-quality audio. Don’t rely on built-in mics on your laptop – the resulting audio may be tinny, distorted or faint, even if you have some decent hardware. Instead, use cabled headset microphones to ensure that everything your presenters say is clear.

Alternatively, Kate recommends considering using a land line telephone. Even the most reliable internet connection can fail, and if it does, your VoIP connection will be lost, too. If you want to take an extra precautionary step, think about dialing into the webinar from a land line to be safe.

10. Run a Test Webinar

Whatever you do, don’t assume that everything will go smoothly during the live webinar without testing your equipment first. Do at least one run-through several days before the live event to make sure that everyone knows what they’re doing, and that all your gear is functioning correctly.

11. Keep Backup Batteries / Power Cables Handy

If you can’t use power cords for your hardware, ensure that not only are all laptop batteries fully charged before the broadcast, but that you have at least one spare battery on hand for each piece of equipment. Don’t run the risk of a dead or malfunctioning battery ruining your webinar!

12. Prep Your Studio Space

If you’re hosting your webinar from a home office, ensure that your kids/pets/neighbors won’t interfere or make any noise during the webinar. Alternatively, if you’re running the webinar from your office, find a quiet room with a door where you won’t be disturbed. Keep your studio space clean and free of clutter, and turn off your computer notifications, cell phone and anything else that could distract you or your audience during the webinar.

13. Enlist a Technical Assistant

During the webinar, either you or your presenters need to be focused on delivering a great presentation. The last thing you should be worrying about is technical problems. With this in mind, enlist the assistance of an assistant who can handle technical issues as they arise, moderate comments and other tasks that might derail the presenter.

14. Be Early

Ever bothered to stick around for a webinar that started late? Me neither. Make sure you’re prepared and ready to go at least 10 minutes before the webinar is scheduled to begin, or even earlier if you can. This will help get things going promptly, and can help you feel more relaxed when it’s time to begin.

15. Accept That Things WILL Go Wrong

No matter how much you prepare, things can – and WILL – go wrong. Come to terms with this, and don’t stress out too much.

“As much as you prepare yourself, there’s always hiccups that occur during the live event,” says Chris. “If they didn’t, it would get suspicious if it was even live or not. I actually had a presenter who was using his laptop to present. He didn’t plug the laptop in using the power cord and was running off the battery. We were about 10-20 minutes into the presentation when he just cut out. The laptop ran out of juice and the computer shut right off. I was moderating the presentation and had to ‘entertain’ the audience for about 10 more minutes as the presenter had to get his power cord, sign back in etc.”

Some Final Tips on Running a Webinar From Kate and Chris

It’s impossible to prepare for every eventuality when producing a webinar, but there are a few things Kate and Chris recommend doing every single time to ensure things go as smoothly as possible:

• ALWAYS do a dry run. No matter what. Even if your speakers don’t want to. Just do it.
• Don’t rely on the internet; be sure to call in from a landline instead of using the mic on your computer.
• Use poll questions to engage your audience.
• Start promoting at least 7 days in advance.
• Put presenter bios on your registration page. It adds credibility. Head shots are nice too.
• A/B test and optimize your registration page and email invites.

Last week, I had the chance to help train a fresh new crop of recruits for a long-time client of ours. After 12 years of trying to figure this teleprospecting thing out, I’d say we’re completely sold on how we do things internally around here. The interesting part for me is seeing how others not immersed in the AG Salesworks culture react to our process and mindset. Fortunately, most of the post-training feedback was in line with what we wanted to hear. The long and the short of it was that we helped provide a framework on how to best attack all warm and cold opportunities. Sometimes, all inside sales need is a place to start.

Each group we train has different characteristics from the last. What I can say, through general observation over these past 3 days of training, is that there are always a few consistencies every salesperson we’re training relates to.

Here are 5 tips for trainers to keep in mind during training to keep everyone on point:

1) Prospecting is more of an art than you think it is.

Some of your average sales or marketing reps believe that periodically picking up the phone or sending an email is all you need to do when you prospect. What we make abundantly clear to the reps we’re training is that you need a regimented follow-up process in order to identify the right opportunities. If you embrace prospecting as an art, it’s much more exciting – and more effective.

2) Tell your reps (especially your senior folks) to leave their preconceived notions at the door. 

There is nothing more important to do when kicking off training than setting the appropriate tone. Everyone is going to have their own opinion on how to prospect. Make a point to ask sales reps to come in with a clean slate and open their mind to alternative ways to prospect.

3) Don’t be afraid to challenge the naysayers.

Every training manager has seen the salesperson who challenges every point you try to make; I suggest challenging them back. Assuming you believe in your message, you can turn those naysayers around. Also, when they don’t appear to be engaged, call on them. They love that.

4) Get in the trenches with them.

Once the training is complete, I suggest call shadows and 1-on-1 time to make sure they’ve absorbed the material. This is also an opportunity for you to answer questions that they may have been afraid to ask in a group setting.

5) Use hard metrics.

Assuming they’ve begun to actively apply your training suggestions, how do you know it’s working? Use hard metrics to measure their success.

A few of our favorites are:

• Connect rate % - The amount of calls or emails divided by live conversations. Our average is 10%.
• Lead rate % - The amount of live conversation divided into leads passed to sales. Our average is 5%.
• Conversion rate to forecast % - The amount of passed leads landing on forecast. Our average is 70%

With these tips, you should be well on your way to training a successful teleprospecting team. And don’t forget: even if you’re the trainer, you’re sure to learn a lot on the way, too.  

We remain convinced that the best way to explain anything is through maps. They combine the frenzy over data with an instantly recognizable visualization for how all that data fits. 

With that in mind, we've put together a new edition of the 27 maps that explain America.

You'll find pretty much everything in here: eating and drinking habits, pet ownership, ethnicity, language, and more.

Check it out.

Predilection for passports, by % ownership. Mississippians don't get out too much.

The most overrepresented job in every state. About what you'd expect. Illinois has an inordinate number of groundskeepers.

The most educated states in America. Denver stands out in the West.

How do service organizations, specifically large service organizations lose sight of the customer and the shifting demands of a dynamic market?

Everybody says they’re in business to serve the customer, but the people who are actually customer facing and customer serving are often those with the least experience, the least knowledge and the least authority because that lowers cost-per-serve. Unfortunately, it also lowers quality, depth, flexibility and engagement, compromising the brand experience and making service a commoditized set of processes that frontline staff are judged on their ability to conform to.

The situation should logically resolve itself as people become more valuable to the organization, and therefore gain what has been missing when they were on the frontline – experience, knowledge, authority, influence and networks. But what actually happens is that those people are shepherded into talent programs that promote them further and further away from a direct relationship with customers – which is an increasing juxtaposition in itself – and their focus moves. It becomes more and more introverted.

Market-based innovation then becomes increasingly difficult, because the people now empowered to make change decisions are locked into an internal bubble that seals their own market impressions firmly in the past. They are also fighting battles and priorities that actually have increasingly little to do with where the money comes from.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop, the Brand Storytelling Workshop Series and Brand Strategy and Customer Co-Creation Workshops

Don Draper would HATE how we market our businesses today with a passion! In the old school of marketing, there would be no need for marketing automation, you would plan your campaign, create your ads, send them out into the world and then sit back, sip some whisky, grope your secretary, and reap the benefits (or not.) Don thought computers were distractions and would clearly have hated marketing automation software.

Mad Men makes the world of marketing seem glamorous and full of excess….not so much in the real world! Most of us online marketers and advertisers work HARD! There is a little more to it than we see on the show…and a lot less drinking, partying and sleeping around!! However we do have the advantage of technology to help make our lives a little easier.

Long gone are the days of primping your advertising campaign and cutting the apron strings to let it do its thing out in the big wide world. Most of us, in the marketing world, are workaholics. We constantly strive to improve our efforts, to measure our successes and failures, to find new and creative outlets.

Finding the balance between work-life and life-life gets more difficult every day. If only we could spend a few hours in the office during the day, then drink and party all night hey? Sadly it just isn’t real life. What we can do is let the tech we have available to us, help us tip the balance.

Can you imagine Don Draper hunched over a computer, planning his strategies, creating quality content and finding the right outlets, at the optimum times, to send to the right people? Nope, me either! Old school marketing involved an awful lot of guesswork and stabs in the dark. Nowadays we can follow, track and measure our every move and know exactly what our customers want…and what they don’t!

The Don Draper school of marketing taught us to spend thousands on one campaign, take months to perfect it, then launch it and hope for the best. What we do now is implement marketing software to help us….

• Constantly create new and interesting content
• Consistently engage with our customers in real-time
• Be there for our customers whenever they need us
• Nurture our leads
• Create a paper-free customer database
• Spend an awful lot less money
• Do more than just sell, sell, sell
• Track and measure EVERYTHING

Here are some amazing marketing automation tools that let you engage, automate and more!

Pardot: B2B marketing automation suite by Salesforce

Pardot lets you automate and schedule your social sharing and email marketing campaigns as well as tracking your interactions including page views. Some more great features are:

• Lead nurturing
• Lead scoring
• Lead management
• ROI reporting
• Google analytics
• Landing pages and forms
• Android/iOS/windows/linux/web supported

Infusionsoft: Sales & Marketing Automation for Small Business

Infusionsoft is a marketing automation platform with a built in CRM and great eCommerce feature. You can manage and automate just about all of your marketing channels from here, along with:

• Metadata and keyword finder
• Web forms
• Easy publishing and landing pages
• Marketing reports
• Scoring tool
• Sales reports
• Mac/web/windows supported

ExactTarget: Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud

ExactTarget is a marketing cloud which helps you to build and manage your customer relationships along with establishing your brand across multiple networks. They also offer:

• Advanced content management
• Content personalization
• CRM
• Real-time tracking
• Pre-built templates
• Sophisticated marketing automation
• Web supported

Hubspot: InBound Marketing Software

Hubspot is inbound marketing software for sole traders up to large enterprises, allowing you to take advantage of your customer’s online shopping habits. Other Hubspot features are:

• Marketing automation
• SEO tools
• Blogging tools
• Content publishing
• Lead management
• Marketing analytics
• Web supported

ActiveCampaign: Email Marketing & Email Automation

There’s no doubt that Don would hate email marketing. After all, he rarely even wrote his own letters. ActiveCampaign is a marketing and sales automation master, with your marketing tools for your iPhone and iPad, including:

• Marketing automation
• CRM software
• Email marketing
• Customizable workflows
• Live eCommerce data
• Sales automation
• Email templates and designer
• SMS marketing

Simplycast: Customer communication suite for inbound marketing, marketing automation and multi-channel communication

Simplycast is a multi-channel marketing suite for all types of business and is used by big brand names all over the world. It allows you to track your every, online move plus some more essentials such as:

• Landing pages
• Form builder
• Online surveys
• Email marketing
• Marketing automation
• Facebook and Twitter marketing
• Web supported

See anything you like? If you can’t make your mind up you can compare marketing automation apps side-by-side to make your job a little easier.

Speaking as a marketer myself, I simply could not live without these fabulous tools that we all have access to. There are just too many outlets for our creativity to manage it all manually. Can you imagine jumping from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to GooglePLUS to Pinterest all day long? And they are just the social networks, add your email marketing, blogging, video making and mobile marketing to the mix!! You would be dizzy by the end of it all and probably not have achieved too much either. Marketing automation is heaven-sent to us to marketers. It means that we–and anybody who markets their small business–can plan and schedule our campaigns, measure our results and keep working on the go. We will never miss a lead opportunity again!

As much as we love Don Draper and his lifestyle, the reality is there is much more to marketing in the twenty-first century than there was in Don’s day. Take advantage of the great marketing technology we have access to, make your life easier, and you may even find the time to party!

The man himself said “Well, technology is a glittering lure. But there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product.” What do you think?

FRANKFURT – Europe’s economic recovery is in danger. Governments are under pressure to save it, but struggling with political obstacles and disagreement among themselves over what to do.

Instead, the region is pinning its hopes — once again — on the European Central Bank, which is expected to launch new stimulus measures if the economy gets any worse.

Europe’s lack of growth is looming larger and larger, however, and the ECB says it can’t save the economy alone.

For more than five years since the eurozone hit turbulence over too much debt in 2009, governments’ answer has been to raise taxes and restrain spending. And there’s been some progress. Deficits have shrunk, and countries that needed bailout loans are slowly getting their act together.

But second quarter growth was zero, after only four quarters of measly expansion. While unemployment in the United States has fallen to 6.2 per cent from 10 per cent at its peak in Oct. 2009, Europe’s is at 11.5 per cent — still near last summer’ 12 per cent. The risk is that the eurozone remains stagnant for years — bad news not just for its people but also its three major trading partners: the U.S., Britain and China.

As worries spread, the debate over austerity versus growth is sharpening again. EU leaders will meet Oct. 6 to discuss growth, while the ECB will hold a policy meeting Thursday at which it is expected to flag its willingness to announce more stimulus such as bond purchases.

ECB President Mario Draghi is ringing the alarm.

He says the central bank can’t do it all alone and that governments should dial back austerity, within EU rules aimed at restraining deficits. “It would be helpful for the overall stance of policy if fiscal policy could play a greater role alongside monetary policy, and I believe there is scope for this,” Draghi said in a speech last week. Government spending can help boost growth by providing demand when the private sector is struggling.

Draghi’s not the budget boss, however. Each of the eurozone’s 18 member governments decides its own spending. Germany, Europe’s biggest economic and political power, and Chancellor Angela Merkel are sticking with the emphasis on austerity. Countries with extremely high debt, such Italy, are under pressure to keep the lid on spending.

Here’s a look at Europe’s dilemma.

IN THEORY: Some economists think much more needs to be done. Francesco Giavazzi and Guido Tabellini at Bocconi University in Milan say the 18 eurozone governments should do a co-ordinated 5 per cent tax cut, spread their budget balancing efforts over an extra 3-4 years, and issue long-term bonds that the ECB would buy. That’s unlikely to happen, as such steps would run into legal and political objections.

But the proposal is a sign of how much stimulus some think is needed.

If YOU BUILD IT: Draghi backed a proposal by Jean-Claude Juncker, the incoming head of the EU’s executive commission, for a 300 billion-euro ($394 billion) fund to invest in infrastructure such as roads, bridges and ports, drawing on existing EU funds and private investment. Governments, particularly Germany with its balanced budget, could do the same. If they want to, governments could borrow cheaply. Bond interest rates are very low. Germany’s 10-year bonds yield a rock-bottom 0.89 per cent. Even Ireland, bailed out in 2010, faces yields under 1.8 per cent — below even 10-year U.S. Treasurys at 2.34 per cent.

“From a market perspective, they have an enormous amount of room,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, an economist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. “There is a good argument that many are making that governments should make the most of that room and take out some more debt and invest more in infrastructure, education and other things.”

So far Merkel and pro-austerity Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble aren’t budging. Schaeuble says yes to investment, but only without new borrowing. He’s facing resistance from within the government, however. The Social Democratic Party, a partner in the coalition government with Merkel’s conservatives, is pressing for more investment spending, and an expert commission is looking at the issue.

TAKE IT EASY: A smaller scale but more likely approach would be for Germany and other EU leaders to look the other way if countries fall behind in reducing their deficits to meet European Union rules. That would avoid obliging governments to make growth-killing, short-term tax increases just to get the deficit down. France, for instance, has already admitted it won’t make its budget targets for this year.

CUTTING SMART: Draghi urged countries to be smart in cutting their budgets — for instance, to spare spending on long-term investment that helps growth in future years, and not to just rely on growth-killing tax increases. France’s President Francois Hollande is doing something along those lines, as his government is pushing 30 billion euros in business tax cuts through 2017, offset by 50 billion in spending cuts. It’s half stimulus, half austerity.

Yet the proposal was denounced as German-style austerity by Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg. Montebourg was fired and Hollande vows to press ahead.

STRUCTURAL REFORMS: Beyond budgets, economists say there is much that France and Italy — two of the weaker economies in the eurozone — can do to help growth by enacting more flexible rules on hiring and firing.

So far, there’s been some progress, but major reforms remain undone. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has vowed to tackle them — over the next 1,000 days. Uncertainty about France and Italy remains a key source of weakness, according to economist Holger Schmieding at Berenberg Bank. “Businesses are withholding investment decisions until they see how much prime ministers Renzi and Valls can deliver,” he says.

DEAL? Ultimately, Germany’s attitude may soften if it sees France and Italy getting serious about reforms.

Kirkegaard said the question is finding a way for Germany to back a joint investment fund. “There’s no chance that Germany is going to do such a thing if they are afraid that the French and the Italians are not serious about reforms. .. It reduces the moral hazard that Germany is always concerned about — that the Germans write a check and the Italians and the French spend it and they don’t do any reforms.”

___

Hinnant contributed from Paris.

The post Too much austerity? Europe confronts impact of its policies as economic recovery fades appeared first on Canadian Business.

Warren Buffett's 2013 annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders included six "fundamentals of investing."

Not only is Buffett the most successful investor in history. He also shares his wisdom in an approachable and entertaining manner.

We compiled a few of Buffett's best quotes from his TV appearances, newspaper op-eds, magazine interviews, and of course his annual letters.

Investing novices and experts alike can learn from the advice that the he has articulated through the years.

If we've missed any of your favorites, let us know in the comments.

Buying a stock is about more than just the price.

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

Source: Letter to shareholders, 1989

You don't have to be a genius to invest well.

"You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ."

Source: Warren Buffet Speaks, via msnbc.msn

But, master the basics.

"To invest successfully, you need not understand beta, efficient markets, modern portfolio theory, option pricing or emerging markets. You may, in fact, be better off knowing nothing of these. That, of course, is not the prevailing view at most business schools, whose finance curriculum tends to be dominated by such subjects. In our view, though, investment students need only two well-taught courses - How to Value a Business, and How to Think About Market Prices."

Source: Chairman's Letter, 1996

Everything on your landing page leads to this moment – – > inspiring your reader to click that call-to-action (CTA) button.

Your landing page has painted a specific vision of the wonderful future that awaits the reader once they click that button. Now it’s up to your CTA button to seal the deal. Does the button make it easy for your reader to click, or plunge him into a morass of Hamlet-like indecision?

The CTA copy on your button, while short, directly impacts your click through rate (CTR). The placement and design of your CTA button also have an impact, but here we’re going to focus on the text.

Pairing Nicely with Your Headline

Good CTA copy shares some qualities of a good headline. You want to keep it short, less than 150 characters. You also need to give the reader a good reason to click. The underlying question of every headline and CTA button is – why should this reader click? What’s the value of taking action to the reader? While your headline teases with possibility, your CTA button copy answers that call.

Let’s take a look at Copyblogger’s membership landing page headline:

And now it’s CTA button:

The headline makes the promise – you can become a content marketing expert! How? The CTA button answers – join Copyblogger Authority.

What does this mean for your CTA button copy?

First, it means that your CTA button copy isn’t going to accomplish much on its own. From the headline, to subheaders, to body content, your landing page has to be building the expectation and anticipation of the real value your visitor will receive for taking action.

The CTA button is there to seal the deal, not to make it.

So your CTA button’s copy must align with the benefit promise of that page’s headline and copy. Ideally, you’ve clarified the interests and pain points of the specific audience for this specific landing page in order to write the rest of the copy. This is the same information to use when crafting your CTA copy.

Words, Words, Words

OK, let’s get to the actual words that work well:

Action-oriented verbs are always great places to start. However not all commands are created equal. Since you want your CTA copy to explain the value of the action, command words that describe that value will often do better than action words that focus on what the reader has to do. In one case study, changing copy from “Order Information and Prices” to “Get Information and Prices” resulted in 14.79% increase in conversions. In another test on a SaaS landing page, “See demo” outperformed “Test it out.”

Why? Because the outperforming options told the reader what they’ll – well – get. “Order” and “Test” put the onus on the reader, on what they must do and not on the value they’ll receive.

So instead of starting with an action verb that’s commanding the reader to do something, select an action verb that gives them something. Compare:

Example #1: “Request a free quote”v”Receive a free quote”

Include numbers. Numbers make the benefit quantifiable, which makes it more credible and real in your visitor’s mind.

Example #2: “Receive your ebook filled with carb-free recipes” v “Enjoy these 27 carb-free recipes”

Use the first person. The CTA button is all about the reader taking action, so put the copy in her perspective. Numerous tests have shown that using “my” instead of “you” boosts conversion rates. Let’s refine Example #1 this way: “Receive my free quote.”

A CTA’s Most Important Words: “A/B Test”!

If there is one default CTA word, it’s “Submit.” It accurately describes any landing page situation; your reader is submitting information. When HubSpot looked at over 40,000 of their customers’ landing pages, they found that CTA buttons with “submit” underperformed those without that word.

CTA words that did even worse? “Download” and “Register”

However, in a separate HubSpot test of one specific landing page, it compared “Download Now” against “Get My Free Ebook Now.” The results…. “Download Now” had triple the CTR than the other option.

Now all the testing reviewed to this point told us that “Get My Free Ebook” should have done better.

What does this mean for your CTA button copy?

Test, test, test. Our touchstone for all landing page copy, including the CTA copy, is that it’s specific to the needs and interests of that page’s targeted audience. So all best practices notwithstanding, the best practice for any given landing page is the CTA button that provides the best results.

Start with these solid guidelines and then test the hell out of it. Even if you’re happy with the CTR on one page, test out if it could be better.

CTAs That Don’t Lose the Name of Action

Here is your cheat sheet so your CTA copy keeps the currents flowing towards action:

• Fulfill the specific promise of your landing page’s headline; this keeps your CTA copy aligned with the vision of benefits presented throughout the page
• Start with action-oriented verbs that describe what the reader will get, not what they have to do
• Including numbers enhances the credibility of the copy
• Writing in the first person helps paint of the picture of what the value the action-taker will get
• Continually A/B test

What CTA button copy is working best for you? What changes have you made to CTA button copy that moved things up or down? Let me know what your CTA copy is doing in the Comments area below.

Image Credit: Swatch Group

Swatch emphatically denied a VentureBeat report earlier this summer saying that the watchmaker is collaborating with Apple on a line of smartwatches.

A new Reuters interview with Swatch CEO Nick Hayek does nothing to reverse that. But it does strongly suggest that conversations about partnerships with Apple and others have taken place — and that collaboration with some tech companies may be happening already.

“All the big technology firms want to work with us, and I don’t rule out that we are or could be collaborating in some areas …” Hayek told Reuters.

Hayek believes the tech companies want to partner with Swatch for marketing reasons. “[Technology firms] that want to strike partnerships with us also want access to brands. They want [their products] to be more than a commodity,” he said.

Swatch has long said that it believes it’s the time piece that sells watches, not the “smart” features like step counters and on-wrist messaging.

“Our first message for customers is the watch. If they like it, they might also be interested in the extra functions,” Hayek said. “It is a problem if you only define a product by its technology. Technology alone doesn’t sell, not in watches.”

Yet Hayek points out that Swatch sees smartwatches as an opportunity, and is prepared to “go it alone” in making them. Indeed, the watchmaker is preparing to launch its own smartwatch, called the Swatch Touch, next year.

Hayek says some new “smart” features might be enabled in Swatch devices through new Bluetooth technology. Presumably he’s talking about Bluetooth low-energy technology, which deals with the key limitation of smartwatch functionality — the life span and size of the battery.

Swatch shares have lost 15 percent of their value over the past year, and analysts say the threat of new smartwatches from companies like Apple and Samsung factor into the decline. Smartwatches represent a market worth $93 billion, analysts say.

The Swatch Group also has companies underneath it that produce touchscreens, batteries, and chips that could be used in smartwatches. One of the companies, EM Microelectronic, makes specialized microchips for watches.

“Low-power and low-voltage microchips are our specialty,” Michel Willemin, CEO of EM Microelectronic, told Reuters. “The Swatch Touch, for example, is the only battery-powered device to have a touch screen that is always active because its power consumption is so low.”

Swatch CEO Hayek said, “We work with many companies, but there’s no reason to shout it from the rooftops,” he said. “EM Microelectronic supplies tiny parts to many, maybe also Apple …”

Apple is expected to unveil a new smartwatch, or line of smartwatches, at a well-hyped event September 9.

Apple designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Apple software includes t... read more »

We talk a lot about account planning, particularly if our “territory” is one or a few large accounts. Generally, we wrap a lot of nice words around the reasons we do account planning:

Develop deep and trusted relationships in the account. Create a customer for life, through providing great, ongoing customer experiences. Grow the account. Become a strategic partner. Build additional business…..

The list can go on. All are important, but sometimes, I tend to be a little more crass.

I believe it’s my God-given right to 100% share of the account!

That means it’s my job to find all the opportunities I can compete for, or where we can help the customer. I have to find those opportunities and earn them by creating great value with those individuals in the account.

So a key purpose of the account plan is that it’s a structured prospecting plan. Our account planning has to focus on finding new opportunities within the account.

Let’s say we have a $10M account, and we want to drive 10% growth, year over year. That means we have to find $1M of business in the account. We may get some of it through upgrades with those we are currently doing business with in the account. But we probably won’t achieve all the growth we need to achieve by relying on upgrades and cross sell to our current customers.

We have to find new customers and new opportunities, so we have to have a prospecting plan within the account?

What are the other parts of the organization we should be working with? Who else might have the problems that we can solve? How can we leverage referrals from our current customers within the account?

Prospecting within the account is no different than prospecting within the territory–except the account may be our territory. We have to know how many prospects we have to contact to find and qualify a deal. We have to know the average deal size and our win rate, and our cycle time to develop a healthy pipeline for our account. If it takes 5 prospects to find a single opportunity, our win rate is 50% and our average deal size is $100K.

To make our $1 M in growth in the account, we have to close 10 deals, with 20 deals for a healthy pipeline (assuming sales cycle of 12 months or less), and we have reach 100 new prospects in our account to find and qualify those 20 opportunities.

So our account plan becomes a very focused prospecting plan. We know we have to prospect and engage those 100 new people in the account. How do we find those, how do we leverage existing relationships, how do we engage those new people in meaningful and relevant ways…..

If you want to be truly important and strategic to your customers, you have to have a goal of 100% share of the account (or approaching that). You won’t get that by farming and nurturing your current business in the account, you have to prospect and hunt.

Does your account plan have a strong prospecting plan that you can measure your attainment against?

As leaders embrace the importance of culture and community in building a brand the focus and value of a brand is now shifted to the place it’s supposed to be, the people! The word “Social” in social business is the major change that leaders and brands must embrace which means a new focus must be made on improving who, how and why we communicate.

Before we get into designing a culture that embraces this shift in communication and collaboration we must first understand the technology and innovation that are driving this change. Technology and innovation won’t fix culture or communication problems but in order to architecture a culture that solves these problems we must understand the technology currently powering the digital world of work.

Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s the latest and great technology, the box cell phone and color printer that my Dad had were only available at his work. Times have changed thanks to social, mobile, analytics and cloud not only do the employees have the latest and greatest technology but also in many cases they’ll have created a connected ecosystem empowering them to be more productive on their smart phone then any cubicle or office ever would be. So how does this new connected employee change the way a company culture is built?

Digitally connected and technology driven employees affect on culture:

First off the culture must be built to embrace this new innovation by creating security and technology policies that protect the brand while still allowing the employee to utilize their technology to be more productive. Companies that tried to fight this created what is known as shadow IT or what I like to call it, “Put too many useless policies in place for no reason so productive departments and leaders did whatever they needed to, to get the job done!”

Secondly many companies thought by adding a video conferencing unit in the conference rooms and providing laptops with web cameras they found the easy button to fixing collaboration problems. Collaboration isn’t just about improving how people communicate, it’s also how devices and files are shared, how content management systems talk to learning management systems and how chat clients connect with remote employees and external communities.

Thirdly when companies first embraced the idea of social media it was assigned to the marketing department or inherited by the PR team. Some companies understood the value of social media and social business collaboration tools and integrated these solutions within all “customer facing” departments increasing content collaboration and community engagement. But in this digitally connected and technology driven workplace we have today, being a social business is far more than just content and community improvements.

What is required to implement a dotted-line culture?

Management buy-in and leadership support aren’t enough anymore because to implement this change and remove silos and collaboration barriers change must be adopted throughout every facet of the organization.

Companies must hire and fire for culture fit while also implementing training and rebranding of employees skill sets to make sure employees are given the support and tools required to do their job in a new way.

Managers must also be compensated in such a way that they encourage and lead their employees to do what’s best for the team, which might mean collaborating with other departments, or utilizing shared assets to complete a task.

Lastly leadership must create a culture that shows employees that not only they care about them today but also they care about their future and building and leveraging their personal brand. This isn’t done by providing free lunch or adding a Ping-Pong table in the lobby. This is only possible by establishing authentic relationships that together build a community and foundation built on trust and a shared mission that everyone’s role is vital for the company to be successful.

These things are only possible if the company embraces training not as something that is done once a year or part an employees’ onboarding rather a daily element of employee and company growth. The dotted line culture is not only a dotted line for communication but it is also a dotted line that is agile enough to embrace change and allow leadership to step up and focus on the success of the company rather than the success of their individual departments.

What departments have dotted lines?

When a dotted-line culture is invested in and given the time needed grow, it will operates less like a network of employees and more like a community of passionate people coming together for a shared cause and mission.

For this internal community to succeed it not only requires open and authentic communication with fellow employees but also the external customer community. This open communication allows for fluid feedback, improved customer service, real-time engagement and humanized connection that builds trust, respect and loyalty both between the customer and the brand but the employees and customer community.

Each company will require a unique management structure and communication flow but here are some examples that leverage this dotted line culture that can help paint the picture for your organization.

For the sales team to accurately understand the customer community problems and current engagement with the brand the social selling team must be actively communicating with marketing to understand business intelligence, customer service team to understand current open issues and marketing to understand the brand story.

For the community managers to fully embrace their roles as the voice and face of the brand they must be an active participate in the leadership discussion on business goals and strategy while also understanding the brand messaging being constructed by the marketing team and the product features and roadmap controlled by the product management team.

These are just a few examples of the roles and situations that require open collaboration and communication to effectively do their jobs. In many cases once the internal community is trained and embraces these new dotted line roles and responsibilities, implementing tools for social listening, video conferencing, content collaboration, customer service management and others becomes easy with most tasks and new procedures being automated. This social automation in combination with improved insights; machine learning and the always-connected employee not only will increase productivity but also will provide new analytics and intelligence allowing for the business to make rapid strategic decisions providing more value for the customer and better job security for the employees!

The following blog item is an edited excerpt from my book, The Loyalty Leap.

It is a business practice so long-standing it is practically a cliché. Companies fall all over themselves to woo new customers, but once they get them, they have no idea how to make them profitable.

Sure, a customer can be acquired, but how do companies ensure that investment yields a return? All that work should guarantee some form of long-term dividends, and not only when there is a quarterly blowout sale.

Many marketers aspire to creating relationships between their company and customers that are like those of good neighbors, but the bottom line has to factor in somewhere. Every profitable company keeps an eye on business results, and that should include customer management and lifetime value, as that really connects with the mission of chief financial officer.

Yet customer equity is rarely considered in corporate financial analyses, and there are no established accounting standards for customer management. This may change as loyalty and data-driven marketing become increasingly prevalent, but marketers have a long way to go in this area of measurement. There are some reference points, however.

Customer experience experts Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, for example, established a measure called the Return on Customer, which comes down to a simple equation: “The sum of lifetime values of customers at the end of a period, plus profits delivered during the period, divided by the sum of lifetime values of customers at the beginning of the period.”

There is also Fred Reichheld’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) on the likelihood of customer recommendations. However, while NPS is a great tool, there is the one drawback that it does not focus on risk. And the risk of loss is great. In his book The Loyalty Effect, Reichheld reports half of the customers of most companies change over in five years. Half! That is a staggering loss on an asset that was expensive to acquire in the first place.

So ask: How happy would shareholders be if the cost of customer acquisition was not paying a dividend? Companies routinely fund capital investments in technologies that are amortized over a number of years. It makes sense that investments in the customer asset should be measured as well. The efforts a company makes to meaningfully connect with customers and create enduring, value-based relationships has a direct bearing on the bottom line.

The notion of customer lifetime value and relationship building is neither too lofty nor imprecise for shareholders to rally behind. The short-term profitability of the greatest companies is dependent upon the long-term value of their most valuable assets: their customers. These companies measure a customer’s worth not by a few transactions but over her lifetime, by multiplying the annual sales she is expected to generate by the number of years she is projected to shop with the company.

Once the value equation is fine-tuned so future profits can be correlated with a customer’s predicted lifetime spending, then customer relationships can be proven to contribute to company growth.

What tips do you have for running a successful LinkedIn group for your customers?

1. Seek Outside Involvement

Check out other similar LinkedIn groups and see if you can get some of the professionals participating in them to join yours. Your groupwill gain credibility, and some of those experts’ followers might join in as well. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

2. Ask Quick-Answer Questions

One of the best ways to engage group members is to ask simple, direct questions that are easy for people to answer in a sentence or two (or even a word or phrase). While it’s great to have lengthy, weighty discussions taking place in your group, many members will enjoy the chance to write and read shorter-form content that is relevant to them. – Lindsey Pollak, Millennial Workplace Expert

3. Set Clear Value Expectations

Set clear value expectations in your group name and description. Maintain the value by moderating and deleting spam. If a customer inyour LinkedIn group posts a product or service that’s useful and relevant to members, allow it. Just don’t allow irrelevant promotions. Recruit active members from other groups in the industry. Finally, reward your active contributors with higher status in the group and even moderator privileges. – Joshua Lee, StandOut Authority

4. Provide Value

The more value you provide, the more customers will like/share your content, and the more customers will join your group. Rinse and repeat. – Josh Weiss, Bluegala

5. Offer Useful Tips

LinkedIn groups are especially important if you have B2B customers. Offer them useful tips for getting more use out of your product or service. Not only will it keep them engaged, but it will improve their overall experience, thus making it more likely they will stick around as a customer for a long time. – Andy Karuza, Brandbuddee

6. Moderate Actively

Regardless of whether your group is open or closed, it is very important to have someone moderate discussions, promotions and comments daily. Nothing is worse than constant self-promotion in a group seeking meaningful discussions. Assign each submission correctly and your group members will thank you! – Wilson Owens, Royalty Exchange

The first week at any new job is often the same – you’ll meet with the HR Manager, the IT department will get you set up with the necessities such as email and software applications designed to create success, and your boss will give you the lay-of-the-land. But then the first week is over and it’s time to be a productive member of the team!

Switching jobs often means jumping into the unknown, and more than likely as a sales professional you’ll be asked to target new business. How you go about this can mean the difference between scrambling at the end of each quarter to hit your quota, or hitting it out of the park.

When I first started my sales career (10 years ago this past Sunday), things were very different than they are today. I regularly knocked on doors, hoping that my smiling face and business card would grab the attention of whoever I shook hands with, or I’d try calling a CEO at 6:00pm because he or she was likely to be in the office. Some companies still host cold-calling blitzes where each sales rep makes as many dials as they can and whoever sets the most appointments wins a small prize. I’m not saying that these tactics don’t hold some value today, but I believe there are more efficient and smarter ways to connect with prospects and customers in order to drive business.

We’ve all heard that it’s not about what you know, but who you know. Take a minute to think about the people who you have relationships with or someone that you’re connected to. Do you have friends from high school and college? What about a religious organization or the non-profit that you support. Surely you have relationships with clients new and old. But are you using those connections to drive business?

Strong Connections Are Powerful

Consider who’s in your network and how well you know those contacts. I encourage you to reach out to these individuals on LinkedIn and ask them to catch up over coffee or find 15 minutes to chat about their company and your new role. Connecting with someone one-on-one is a powerful way to grow your network and ultimately grow your business. Not everyone you speak with is going to be a prospect, but they can be an advocate, supporter or center of influence.

The Value of 2nd Connections!

Next, you should look at the people that you’re already connected to and check out their connections. If you have relationships built around trust, try reaching out to those in your network and ask for a few introductions. The idea is that a warm intro is always better than a cold-call, and who better to make that happen than someone you trust.

Try the Three-by-Three Method

Start by picking three centers of influence in your network. Look through their connections and find three people you’d like to be introduced to (these people are your 2nd level connections). Go to that person’s page and click on the arrow next to “Send InMail.” Use the drop-down menu to select “Get Introduced.”

Next you’ll see a list of your mutual connections. Click on your center of influence.

Follow the two rules that LinkedIn provides when asking for an introduction. Be clear and concise with your intentions and give that person an “out” in the event they aren’t comfortable making the intro. There are any number of reasons why someone wouldn’t, and that’s okay. If you have other mutual connections, ask someone else.

Preparation is Required Before any Appointment

High-level Executives don’t have time to meet with everyone who calls them, nor do they want to. They’re more likely to take an appointment with someone that was referred to them. And it’s important to use that time wisely to bring value to the conversation. Before the meeting, you’ll want to do the following:

1. Research the prospect by reviewing their personal LinkedIn profile as well as their company’s LinkedIn page.

2. Take notice of their professional & volunteer experience, skills, schools attended and the Groups they’re involved in.

3. Find something that you have in common and use that to naturally build rapport.

4. Read their summary and a few articles that were recently posted.

It’s crucial to educate yourself before a meeting to ensure that you’re putting your best foot forward. Executives and decision-makers will appreciate that you’re prepared!

LinkedIn is a tool that professionals in any industry can use to show value, grow sales, and target potential clients. When starting a new job as a business development or sales professional, use your network to target prospects and connect others. Always be prepared to bring value to any relationship and think about what you can do for them, more than what they can do for you. Be sure to keep track of your successes with LinkedIn and send a personalized thank you to anyone who’s referred you.

Starting a new sales job and developing new business doesn’t have to be intimidating if you use LinkedIn the way it was designed. Make it a point every week this month to try the Three-by-Three Method and let us know the outcome. We’d love to hear your success stories in the comments below. Good luck and happy connecting!

I recently listened to our sales guy talking with a prospect who had a seemingly endless list of objections. He wanted feature X, he didn't like the way our sales CRM lacked social features, he thought we should improve the mobile experience, and it just went on and on like this. A never-endling list of requests.

Our sales guy defended our app. Immediately jumped in after every objection. Lots of explanations and excuses.

The prospect kept on going. More objections. More demands.

It went back and forth like this for several rounds, and the call wasn't going anywhere. It was just tiring and exhausting, and no value was created for either party. The sales conversation slowly but surely deteriorated into one big waste of time.

How do you handle a situation like this? What can you do when you're inundated by objections, and for every answer you give, you just get another objection?

Let Them Talk Themselves Empty First

First of all, you don't immediately jump at every objection they give you. Instead, let them talk and just listen. Don't create an opposition where it becomes a competition between sales rep and prospect. Give them space to express their concerns.

Ask if there's anything else, and keep listening. Don't defend, don't respond to these objections directly at this stage. 

Prioritize Objections

Now you ask them: "Out of all these things that you mentioned, what's a deal-breaker, what's important, and what's nice to have?"

Let them prioritize their requests and objections into these three categories.

And then focus on the deal-breakers. Completely ignore the nice to haves. Just handle the objections that can kill the deal first.

Then ask them: "Did I do a good enough job? If we could address these particular things in this way, would you consider us as the right solution?"

You'll either get a yes or a no. If you get a yes, it's easy - you can move on with the sale.

But what if they say no?

Then you ask them another question. You ask them: "What's missing? What else do you need?"

Prioritizing their objections, so you can focus on the things that matter, rather than forever dancing back and forth with them around an endless stream of objections.

Ignore The Nice To Haves

Don't talk about nice to haves if you haven't dealt with deal-breakers and the important stuff. Even if you can fulfill all their nice to haves, and you're the perfect fit for them in that category... if you can't resolve the deal breakers, the nice to haves are worthless.

Keep The Conversation On Track

I can tell you from experience that many times prospects will bring up a dozen different things that they want to have, and when you ask them: "What's a deal breaker, what's really important to you?" they will bring up things they haven't mentioned at all.

Prospect: "Well, if you want to talk about the really important things, that's A, B and C." (And during the entire conversation, they've talked about everything from D to Z, but not a single word about A, B or C.)

If that happens to you, don't get frustrated with the customer - it's your responsibility to keep the sales conversation focused on what matters.

YOU have to ask the right questions so that they give you the answers that matter.

The debate rages, there are 100′s of articles discussing the future of selling. To many, the future of selling is social; to another large segment it’s inside sales; to some it’s the channel. Many declare cold calling is dead, still a small number declare selling is dead (I suppose to be replaced by ????) Likewise, there are debates about whether the future is based on Challenger, Insight, Relationship, Provocative, Solution, and others are how selling must be conducted in the future. And some declare Transactional Selling as long past it’s expiration date.

It’s enough to confuse even the most seasoned of sales people or managers.

In an effort to shed some insight on the future of selling, to hopefully put to rest much of the speculation around the Future Of Selling, we have undertaken extensive research—Mike Kunkle and I chatted over a cup of coffee a couple of weeks ago. I have leveraged the most powerful analytics, and reflected sitting by the pool with a Guinness.

I think we have come up with the Definitive Guide On The Future Of Selling. (Drum roll please)

The answer to whether it’s social, inside, channel, transactional, field direct, or electronic trading is…………. It depends! With the additional caveat that it is certainly unlikely to be a single approach by any individual organization and certainly not within the profession.

Naturally, many would tend to get excited by social selling as the future–it’s because we’re preaching to the choir/converted. The places we evangelize and debate social selling are primarily on the social channels — blogs, LinkedIn, online discussions, Facebook, Google +, Twitter, you name it. For those of us that are actively leveraging the channels, we’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid. But we forget, the millions that are not using social/technology based channels. However, well we leverage them, if our customers aren’t here or aren’t listening, we’re talking to an empty room.

Likewise, with any approach to selling you might mention, there are strong advocates and arguments for each approach–whether it’s social, inside, channel, Challenger, Insight, or whatever one chooses. It seems to me, those who declare the future of selling is one or the other or the other or the other—are people who are selling solutions or services based on that approach. So the future is social if you are selling social tools and services. The future is inside selling, if you are selling the systems, tools, and services associated with inside sales. And it’s all about Challenging, providing Insight, being Provocative if that’s what you do.

But in our deep research, we’ve managed to make some more definitive observations, beyond “It Depends.”

The first is, you’ve got to hang out where your customers hang out. It’s not so new. When I first started selling, I sold to bankers and brokers on Wall Street. Consequently, I hung out at the East River Tennis Club, the squash courts at 1 New York Plaza, and, naturally, Harry’s at Hanover Square. In addition to their offices, those were some of the key places where I found an engaged my customers. Today, our customers are hanging out in places we never anticipated. Some are hanging out on the web, others in their offices. Others don’t have offices, so we have to figure out how to reach them. We can’t keep going back to the same old places if they aren’t hanging out there. Likewise, we can’t hang out where we want to, in the hope a customer might show up.

The second is, our customers are likely to be hanging out in a number of different places, so we have to have a multichannel approach to engaging our customers. Customers will engage through our content marketing, socially, at trade shows, through any number of channels. Customers typically don’t limit their research and discovery to one channel, so it is an error for us to focus exclusively, or even predominantly on one channel. We have to engage our customers across all the channels they leverage to learn, explore, and discover.

Third, when we engage, they will be at varying points in their buying cycles. Some won’t be buying, they’re just continuing to learn. Some don’t recognize they should be doing something different, they don’t see the limitations of their current approaches. Some will recognize they have a problem and will need help in defining their problem. Some won’t know how to buy and need to be guided through the buying process, or at the opposite end of the spectrum, have a well defined buying/evaluation process and want an effective/efficient transaction. We have to recognize the buying cycle may be a little squishy.

Fourth, when we do engage them, we have to engage them in a way that’s relevant, meaningful, impactful for them–not us. We have to connect with them, creating value that’s aligned with what they value. Whether it’s teaching them, challenging them, presenting them data about our products and services. Our engagement strategies are defined by what they want and care about, not by what we want to present/pitch. This impacts not only the conversation we have, but how that conversation is most effectively conducted(for the customer). That may be on the phone, electronically, with a data sheet, through a shopping cart, or face to face. It might be by us, an agent, or a partner.

Fifth, it’s unlikely a sales person can cover all the first 4, so we have to learn how to collaborate, within our organizations, with sales specialists, inside sales, sales development reps, product management, and (never thought I’d be caught dead saying this) marketing. We have to design agile/nimble processes that align with how the customer wants to be engaged and buy, with smooth handoffs between those that need to be involved. We have to become masters of extending that beyond our enterprise, into the buying ecosystem and into our customers’ organizations themselves.

And finally Sixth, just as we’ve settled into an effective, efficient, and impactful engagement model, things will change. Our customers will change how they buy, we will go into new segments, acquiring new customers, new business models will arise. We have to constantly be learning, improving, innovating, and changing. We need to learn how to lead that change, not react to changes being driven by others.

So hopefully, I’ve put to rest all the questioning and hand wringing around the Future Of Selling, and how we most effectively, efficiently, and impactfully engage our customers–solve their problems, grow our presence and share with them, and profitably grow our businesses.

We can be very definitive about the Future Of Selling—-It depends!

Us B2B marketers love new technologies, and we thrive on new ideas, methods and strategies – but sometimes we can get a little distracted by the next big thing.

Sometimes we need to take our marketing back to basics to gain a clearer view of where we’re heading.

So as it’s coming up to September, we’ve put together our top ‘back to school’ tips for B2B Marketers – we want to see your A-grade lead generation results!

1. Clean out your website 

Making sure your website is optimised for conversion is a guaranteed way of increasing lead generation. Things like simple A/B tests, and having straightforward landing pages can boost conversion rates by up to 38%. And more conversions to enquiry = more leads for your sales team!

And while you’re optimising for conversion, why not carry out a mini website audit? Making sure your ‘about’ section and pricing are updated are super quick to do, but can be the difference between capturing and losing those leads.

Tip: Understanding your prospects website journey is essential if you want to improve conversion rates (and generate more leads!).  Track your website visitor’s journey, where they’re dropping out and what pages are really boosting conversion.

2. Email practice makes perfect

40% of B2B marketers rated leads generated from email marketing as ‘high-quality’. But with all the new technologies, responsive templates and tactics, have we lost sight of the simple things that will generate those all-important leads?

Take your email strategy back to school by A/B testing your subject lines, messaging and template. Not convinced? Through A/B testing different email elements, the team behind the Obama presidential email campaigns were able to generate an extra $2.2 million in donations! We’re definitely impressed.

Tip:  Enrich your email marketing activity by identifying who has visited your website in response to each email campaign, where they went onsite, and how long they stayed there for.

3. Keep your content marketing in-line 

Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates around 3 times more leads. It’s time to sit down, put your hand up and ask – what content do my prospects want to see?

76% of B2B buyers are searching for content that is relevant in helping them make an informed decision about a product or service. So gather your sales and marketing teams together to map out the buyer journey from awareness to sale – plotting in the different information needed at each stage.

By mapping out clear information needs, you can identify the key subjects you need to include in your content planning, and gather ideas about the best ways to deliver that information.

Tip: Use website intelligence software to gain insight into which content pages your prospects are interacting with already. By identifying your strongest performing content pages, you can guide your strategy with real prospect insight.  

This blog was originally posted on the Lead Forensics website. Read the original article here.

Forms have been around for ages. But the edge that mobility brought in, has enormously improvised the practice of capturing information thereby leading to better ways of engaging and delighting users! A slew of third party devices offering API’s for mobile app integration and the inherent native hardware features of mobile devices themselves, have made the process of capturing inputs seamless and smart – to the extent, that at times there is no input effort needed from the user at all!

In this article, we look at some ways to make your app smart when it comes to capturing information!

Health and fitness apps: Here’s the new mantra!

Whether it is Heart Rate, Blood Glucose or Blood Pressure you are trying to capture, stop asking the user to give them to you. A lot of health devices now support mobile integration in ways that would simply let your app read incoming values of the heart rate or the blood glucose.  Apart from saving the user from having to input these values, you also earn the advantage of gaining accurate and real-time information.

With iOS 8’s Healthkit,  consolidation of all health information onto a single platform will soon become the in-thing and your app could just read data off Healthkit or push data to it.

Digital signatures

Gone are the days when you would ask a customer to wield a pen and sign on your paper-based form or register. Digital signatures where the user just uses touch to sign on your screen, are now in vogue. The finger becomes the pen and your app provides the canvas that captures the signature – all legality duly taken care of. A lot of banks and firms have adopted this practice to make the whole process of registering a customer much more hassle-free than before.

Geo-location

If your user has allowed you to track their geo-location, make the best use of it. Fill in the location fields in your form, with pre-populated text based on the geo-location information that you have. For example, you need to know the user’s Country. Chances are that though the person’s current location may not be her address, the country is not going to change by the time she gets home!  You could also use geo-location to pre-populate ‘what’s nearby’ information. Another example of using geo-location is to track a person’s workout jog and calculate the miles covered at the end of it. The possibilities are many.

Not just a phone but a scanner too!

With mobile devices, QR code scanning reached an altogether new level.  There are several creative ways you can use this QR code scanning capability. Ask customers to download your app and fill in their identification forms by simply scanning a QR code on the ID card or reservation slip you gave them at the time of registration. They will love you for it!  One scan of the QR code will be enough to tell you who the person is and get them signed up in seconds!

Recognize and authenticate the new-gen way!

Fingerprint recognition, iris recognition and image recognition are all new ways to identify and authenticate app users. It is also faster than having to type in a username and/or password each time. Besides not having to worry about conventional password hacking mechanisms. Though this is yet to pick up in a big way, technology is improving by the minute and alternate recognition techniques are slated to make a mark in the future.

Annotations – make your own poster!

Selfies and photo-editing are a fad now. So why not capitalize on this trend to have users fill up your forms in a creative and fun way. Let’s say you have an auction house app or a reselling platform app. Users can simply click photos of the object they are trying to sell and highlight its features with annotations!  Your mobile app should allow them to do that with simple annotation provisions such as say for example, circling a part of the photo and tagging a caption to it! Fun, easy and far better than filling in several text fields about the highlights of the object you are trying to sell!

On the other end, people who are potential buyers would also appreciate handy annotations that give them quick information – at a glance – about the product .

Accelerometer – capturing the nuances of mobility!

This native device feature can be used in several ways to capture nuances of a person’s movement based on how the mobile device is positioned at different points in time.  Apart from the most basic usage of the accelerometer to detect device and screen orientation, use the accelerometer to give you information about the user’s speed, step count, elevation etc.  A must-have for fitness apps but other apps could use it too.

Let users voice themselves!

Imagine a form-filling experience where all you need to do is talk into your phone and not move a finger! Well, that’s exactly what created a buzz with Google’s NexusOne.  Use voice input for your forms when you need well-known (and not person-unique) words as inputs – as this makes it easier for the app to recognize what the user is saying and fill the form accordingly. Using voice input for something like a name is not a very good idea because across geographies and languages, names can have varying degrees of phonetic complexity and the app may not capture the word accurately.

The good old camera

Whether it is the ease of app users uploading their pictures or the convenience of clicking one on-the-go, the mobile device camera is here to stay. Add to that, the QR code it elegantly scans. Ensure that your apps exploit the camera feature to give your users the added benefit of convenience at their fingertips. Camera usage is also hugely popular with enterprise apps used by field executives out on a mission to sign up new customers for which a face photo is necessary. When asking app users to use the camera, help them capture the object properly by providing an on-screen frame that best defines the kind of photo you want. Also, give them a preview and the ability to edit and annotate, if applicable.

Those were few of the many ways in which mobile forms can be made to have the extra edge that today’s technology commands. Have you tried any novel ways to harness technology for your mobile app? We’d love to know. So long!

Explore the mainstays of mobile integration and ways to integrate mobile apps in your enterprise. Click the image below to download the whitepaper - 

Image source: www.photos-public-domain.com

Persistence or ignorance?

“As the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his collaborator Amos Tversky pointed out decades ago, we tend to chase sunk costs – the time, effort, and money that we put into something and can’t get back out.  It’s irrational behavior. Once your team realizes that a project is failing, previous investments shouldn’t matter.  The best you can do is try to make smart choices with what you have left to invest.  but too often we stay the course, unwilling to admit that we have squandered resources that would have been better spent elsewhere.”  from HBR May 14

Facing an existential crisis, American manufacturers battled back.  They released their iron grip on traditional manufacturing and management practices, adopted new ones, and are now experiencing a renaissance.

But it required letting go – ‘abandoning’ much that was ingrained, assumed, instinctual and understood about how to manufacture.  It was traumatic – and although the sunk cost investment which was abandoned was more emotional than capital, the tremendous resistance to walking away took many companies to the brink.  It was only the black & white alternatives, change or die, which prompted action.

Business development isn’t yet a crisis

For most manufacturing companies, revenue & profit trends are concerning, or maybe just perplexing, but not yet critical.  Revenue is stagnant or maybe contracting or growing slowly; business and sales cycles are unpredictable; margins are pressured; and there’s a general feeling of unease not unlike the operational uncertainties of twenty years ago.  And the threat is less clearly identifiable – changing buying habits is less galvanizing than the invasion of cheap Chinese products.

But absent a crisis, the resistance to change is too much to overcome in many cases.  It’s hard to condemn the VP Sales who hesitates to suggest cutting his direct sales force and investing substantially in virtual, early stage sales, through content marketing and marketing automation.  Similarly the COO, who comes from an engineering background and whose focused on continuous manufacturing improvement and the bottom line can’t be readily faulted for assuming that the business development function simply needs the right people and right management pressure.

Sure, the right people are key.  But great people working on the wrong things are a waste of resources.  And NO frequency of excel spreadsheets is going to grow the top line.

The emotional ‘sunk costs’ of traditional B2B sales

Excerpting from the HBR quote above, “It’s irrational behavior. Once your team realizes that a project is failing, previous investments shouldn’t matter.  The best you can do is try to make smart choices with what you have left to invest.  but too often we stay the course, unwilling to admit that we have squandered resources that would have been better spent elsewhere.”

It’s easy, natural and psychologically predictable that as revenue growth slows, sales cycles stagnate, margins decline and the “top line” becomes problematic that those who are invested in traditional business development will resist change.  They’ll stay the course.

So what’s the solution?  First companies must be positioned to accept a solution.

5 prerequisites for B2B sales growth

1. A CEO/President who recognizes that unpredictable B2B sales is actually a symptom of gradual failure of the current approach
2. Acknowledgement that the approach wasn’t always bad – but that markets and buyers have changed
3. Sr. management with “the balls” (thanks GapingVoid) to walk away from the emotional ‘sunk costs’ of traditional business development
4. An open mindnedness to accept that effective approaches may not feel comfortable, even while they are correct
5. A willingness to change staff if they can’t change themselves, even long-time employees and heroes of yesteryear, to find the right skills and mindset to drive B2B marketing and sales based

It’s easy to list the bullet points – but particularly for manufacturers who are obsessively focused on product specs and details, with traditional management and direct sales teams, these are five enormous hurdles.

Change to what?

That’s a fair question, but one that can’t be satisfied with a canned answer.

But it starts with a “zero moment”….here’s a sneak peak via an interesting post by Daniel Newman on HufPo

“Data that cannot be ignored

The paramount shift from 1:1 marketing that took place between a sales rep and a buyer has gone by the wayside. Even brands that still see this as a viable channel must realize that clients are more informed than ever and it is the boundless volume of content that is creating information parity that at the very least realigns the sales professionals role from informer and educator to creator and innovator.

If nothing else, brands must recognize that by the moment the prospect has landed at your door, the process has long been underway. The companies that ‘get it’ will recognize and prescribe content as a means to be more involved and engaged in creating those moments, those zero moments of truth and those that don’t “get it” will be left on the outside looking in with little more than hope to guide them to their next cycle of growth.”

Is your B2B manufacturing business up to the challenge?  Are you mr. company president?

image – gapingvoid

At the beginning of 2014, Ashley Friedlein rounded up some trends and predictions for the year in digital marketing and ecommerce.

I thought I’d dip back in and take a look at some of the most incipient trends with some simple Google searches.

Do click through to the searches and see what else you can dig up.

Digital transformation/omnichannel/digitisation

'Omnichannel' and 'digital transformation' have both seen increased search numbers over 12 months from September 2013.

'Omnichannel' is most popular, the word describing the idealised state of every marketing and service channel being interchangeable.

Arguably, 'omnichannel', which is a term that seems to get more pickup in the US (some in the UK seeing it as a buzzword) has broader relevance than 'digitisation' or 'digital transformation' which are phrases specifically relating to an organisational journey.

Omnichannel may have been searched for as a more confusing term, of course.

• 'Omnichannel' had approx. 12,100 monthly searches in July 2014 according to Google AdWords.

Customer experience

Here's one term that's most definitely in the ascendancy. As the driver of organisational change, the customer experience is becoming synonymous with the brand.

• 'Customer experience' had approx. 12,100 monthly searches in July 2014 according to Google AdWords.

Real time bidding/programmatic advertising/native advertising/mobile advertising

Advertising is changing rapidly, though it's only 'programmatic advertising' and 'native advertising' that have seen searches increase over the 12 months since September 2013.

'Real time bidding' has fallen off slightly and 'mobile advertising' is seeing the same volume of searches as it was a year ago.

The incredible spike in 'native advertising' searches likely corresponds to Stephen Colbert's skewering of the topic on his US TV show.

• 'Programmatic advertising' had approx. 2,900 searches in July 2014 according to Google AdWords.

Real time bidding/programmatic advertising

Here's a close up of that RTB and programmatic comparison to show you how 'programmatic advertising' seems to have been popularised.

Content curation/content production/owned media

These terms come from an incredibly popular area of marketing - content marketing. However, there's not much change to see here.

A slight increase in 'content curation' searches and a decrease in searches for 'owned media' suggests what some see as the decreasing relevance of the paid/owned/earned model.

• 'Owned media' had approx. 1,600 searches in July 2014 according to Google AdWords.

Service delivery/digital first/mobile first

Three fairly static search terms here when it comes to volume. It's likely that while we may see more and more digital first and mobile first solutions, these have been talked about in the literature for the last few years and therfore search volumes have not been seen to increase.

• 'mobile first' had approx. 8,100 searches in July 2014 according to Google AdWords.

The world of online marketing can be overwhelming, especially for those business owners that have only focused on traditional advertising up until this point. It can be a lot of information to absorb and naturally, mistakes are going to be made.

There are so many segments available, from blogging and content marketing to search engine optimization and paid search marketing. Sometimes knowing what to avoid can help make the transition easier, and that is what we are going to attempt to do. The following five mistakes are commonly made by businesses just start an online marketing campaign. Hopefully this will help you avoid these common mistakes and transition into a successful effort that results in a nice healthy ROI.

1. Not Having a Blog

Not having a business blog is putting you at an immediate disadvantage. Your business should be blogging on a regular basis. Publishing new content not only gives your website visitors something to constantly engage with, but it also creates one more indexed page that can now potentially show up in the search results.

Each time you publish new content you are telling the search engines that your website is being updated. When they see that you are constantly adding new content it causes them to crawl your website more often. They see it as an active website, and a potential source of useful information.

New content can also be used to turn more visitors into leads. You can direct traffic to specific landing pages within the content, as well as specific product pages if you are trying to go for the conversion immediately. You need a blog, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be blogging.

2. Using a ‘Dirty’ Email List

You have to make sure that your email marketing is CAN-SPAM compliant, so you should only be mailing individuals that have requested to be added to your marketing list. Purchased lists are often not opt-in lists, and this can get you into trouble and it is going to result in a high bounce rate and a very poor overall email campaign.

There are several mistakes responsible for poor email marketing performance, but focusing on deliverability is the first step. Pay attention to how responsive your list is, and separate your list into groups based on their open rate and whether or not they click on the links embedded within your email messages. This data can help you target your readers with the best offers. You might want to mail less responsive list members less frequent than you would those that open everything you send and click through to your website.

3. Ignoring Measurable Data

Many business owners dive into online marketing with the same approach that they used with radio, print and TV advertising. It is very hard to directly measure the effectiveness of those advertising channels, but thankfully online marketing can show you very detailed performance reports with plenty of data.

It is important to use analytics to see where your website traffic is coming from and set goals to see how that traffic is funneling through your website. You can literally pinpoint the traffic and referral source for all of your leads and sales. While it used to be difficult to determine what sales cam from TV, what ones heard the radio ad, and what ones came in through a print advertisement, online marketing allows you to know the precise source of the conversions.

There is so much data available, yet so many business owners simply ignore it. This is due in part to not fully understanding it or not knowing that it is available and how to utilize it.

4. Not Optimizing & Making Changes Based on Data

As mentioned above, there is so much data at your fingertips. The worst thing you can do is not make changes to improve your campaign based on that data.

If there is a traffic source that clearly isn’t producing results then eliminate it. If there is a source that is producing a high percentage of conversions then you need to allocate more of the campaign spend there.

The numbers do not lie, so use them. Don’t be afraid to make changes in order to improve your effort. When you begin to optimize your campaign using the information and data points available you can really start to see your return increase. Online marketing is a constant process and requires ongoing optimization.

5. Expecting Overnight Results

It is important to understand that there are no overnight solutions, except for paid search marketing, which can literally have your ads showing on the top search results immediately. Content marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing can all take some time to ramp up. You have to build a solid foundation and build from there, and while there are marketing agencies that like to throw around outrageous timeframes just remember that quality (and long lasting) results take time.

Online marketing can deliver amazing measurable results when done correctly. This isn’t to say that older and more traditional advertising methods are dead, because they still work to some extent. Avoiding these little mistakes can help you launch a more successful online marketing campaign that delivers a positive ROI.

Here's a recent interview Justin Mares did with me. Justin wrote Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers, together with DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg.

It's a great book for startup founders, and if you buy before September 15 you'll get a bunch of awesome bonuses.

Here's an overview of what we talk about:

• the different stages of startup sales
• founder-led sales
• sales challenges for technical founders, and how to overcome them
• developing a sales model that works
• scaling sales
• the difference between good and great sales people
• ... and more ;)

Listen in!

Transcript:

Justin Mares:
Awesome. Okay, cool. Steli, you have a ton of experience with startup sales. One thing that we talk about in Traction Book is we talk about kind of a phased approach where startups are in the early stages where they're trying to go from 0 to 100, 0 to 1,000 customers. There's more of the growth phase of 1000, 10,000 and then there's kind of the scale phase past that, which is where some companies like HubSpot, Salesforce and the like are in that now.

In your opinion, how have you seen sales change across all of those different phases? What do startups need to know, depending on the phase that they're in?

Steli:
Yeah, that's a great question. When we were running an outsourced salesforce in the heart of Silicon Valley basically doing sales for other startups or technology companies, we liked to divide companies into two stages to simplify things: sales exploration and sales execution.

In exploration, what that means is that you typically have already a few customers maybe. That's after you put a product together and you've got it validated and some people like it and some companies pay for it. But you don't yet have a repeatable and predictable sales process where you know exactly the amount of results you're going to drive by the type of activities that you're going to take. You haven't figured it out in a way where you can see the future and you know exactly what to do to hit your numbers next month and the month after.

In the exploration phase it's just like with the customer development process. It's a lot more about learning than about executing, because you don't know yet what to execute. A lot of times companies will make, startups and entrepreneurs will make the mistake of taking the few customers they have and the few results they've seen and thinking, "Well, this is great. We have 20 paying customers. We want to have 2000 paying customers. Let's just hire a bunch of salespeople and have them go nuts and hopefully it's going to create a lot of revenue for us." That usually is not that great of an idea.

In the exploration phase you want to go step-by-step. The very first step, I would say, is as founders, it needs to be a founder-led sales approach where you actually do a lot of the sales selling yourself. Even if you're technical, even if you think you don't have experience, you need to be selling because the type of feedback you're going to be getting, the type of signals and data points and information that you are going to be receiving is going to be completely different from some salesperson you just hired a few weeks ago because they lack the context and experience and really depth of knowledge and connection to your market, your idea, your product, your technology.

So having you speak to people and have them describe to you their problems or why they don't want to buy your solution is invaluable and you can't outsource that. You can't give that task to somebody else. You need in the early days to do this yourself. Even if it sucks, especially if it sucks, to feel that pain and figure out why does it suck, what is so difficult about selling my solution, what works, what doesn't, what kind of emails do people respond to, what about this sales approach is really good or bad? A lot of times founders want to take this like I'm comfortable working and just hire somebody right off the bat to do it and that's usually a bad idea.

At the beginning I would advise people to do sales themselves. Then once you've done it, you'll sell for awhile as founders and you've seen some results, you've created some successes, some things work, some things didn't, you might be tempted to be like, "Well, we're growing. We don't have just ten customers now. We have 50 and it gets harder and harder for me to do the sales stuff and I need to do other things as well, so let's now just go out and hire a bunch of sales pros, right? Preferably with 20 years of experience in our market so they can just come in with a rolodex and get us to 2000 customers like that." Which is what I call "entrepreneurial pipe dreams", like unicorns, like magical fairy dust that solves all your problems.

Whenever you can actually hire a salesperson with 20 years of experience for your teeny-tiny startup that hasn't figured things out yet, you should be scared sh**less. You should be running for the hills because that person is probably better at selling bullsh** than actually selling products. If somebody's really great at sales, they're making a sh** ton of money somewhere, why would they leave to come to work at your company where a lot of things are not figured out yet? And they're probably not going to be making that much money now. They might eventually but not at this point. You need to ask yourself that question.

Anyway, once you've done it yourself for awhile, I would recommend people to go and find some young talent. Find people that have a kind of entrepreneurial sales DNA, that have the hustle DNA, that are young, ambitious, that want to be part of a startup, that have that competitiveness but also some compassion so they actually care about people, they actually care about the things they are selling, they're not just in it for themselves and their profit. Hire two or three inexperienced people to work with you and you still manage that.

I know that sucks and founders are like, "Well, I don't want to manage a sales team. I don't know anything about sales and now I'm hiring these people that don't know anything about sales. We are the clueless crew. How can this actually succeed?" But just like anything else, that's the only reason new companies exist. If the experience companies already provided everything necessary in the world, there would be no need to create new things.

With sales it's similar, in the early days, once you have a bunch of things that work and you have a little bit of success, it's not fully repeatable but it kind of works and you've closed some deals, you have some customers, bring in a little bit more fire power, not to scale what you've accomplished, because what you've accomplished is not yet scalable. But to actually expand more work and more experiments and try more things and have also people that push you to focus more on that.

Once two salespeople show up, all of a sudden you have to give this a lot more priority than when you were alone. Some days you did some sales and other days you just worked on the blog or your new logo or something else. Now you actually have two, hopefully young, bright people sitting there, looking at you, saying, "What are we going to do today to create sales?" That's going to force function you to actually make it a priority for a short period of time.

Test more, try more, experiment more. Once that works a little bit better that what you've done before and you've gotten some good results from it, that's really the time to then look to hire some junior sales leadership, somebody that has been made sales manager, managing a team of four or five people at a company that's a year or two ahead of where you are right now in terms of stage.

After that person takes what you've done, they take that team, they improve on it, they expand, they hire a bunch more people that get it to the next stage and only then will you have something that's pretty, not 100% repeatable and scalable but pretty close to it, that's when you bring in the VP of Sales, a really senior person that can take what you have and now they scale it and put in hiring, new recruiting processes, improve the compensation plan, put in a training plan. They do all these things to create a structure and infrastructure to scale, but that's kind of the last stage of sales hiring for startups and new ventures. When you start, you do it yourself and you hire some young talent and you manage and do it with them, and then you hire some leadership and then eventually you graduate to senior leadership and senior executives.

Justin Mares:
Got it. Okay. There's a lot to dig in there. The first thing, what do you say to founders, especially technical founders who a lot of them kind of have this mentality of, "I'm not good at sales"? What do those people do? Do they just have to suck it up and just not be good at it and deal with it for months at a time? What do you say to those types of people?

Steli:
Yeah, that's a good question. I think there's two separate things to pay attention to. Number one is actually figuring out . . . Most technical people have a skewed understanding and a wrong one, in my opinion, on what sales really is. They think sales is all about talking, sales is all about bullying people into a direction that you want them to. Sales is all about being an extrovert and being out there and loving the attention. Sales is all about being the Wolf of Wall Street basically.

A lot of technical people, rightly so, are like, "I hate these people. I don't want to be one of them and I don't want to have to do this sh**." I agree with them and I think that sales is really not about that. At its most fundamental level, sales is all about asking questions and actively listening and not so much about talking. I find that a lot of engineers are really good at sales; they just don't realize it. What I love about engineers is that a lot of times they've learned to not stay on a surface level understanding. They'll really dig deep.

When you say, "Well, what I'm looking for is something that will help me with email marketing," most salespeople, marketing people who are extroverts would go, "Oh, you need something that helps you with email marketing. We have something that helps you with email marketing. I think you should be a customer." An engineer will be, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What does 'email marketing' even mean? What exactly do you need? Is it newsletters? Is it something else? What sucks about the solutions that are out there today? Have you tried something?" They've learned to actually really dig deep to understand what actually is it that we're talking about.

If you're able to do that, you're already 80% a sales pro because that's really what it's all about is talking to people, discovering what their true needs are and challenges and what their real situation is and what they care about and what they don't care about and what's important to them and what's not. Once you arrive at a real understanding of who the other party is, then it's actually easier to sell. Because if they're a good fit, if you think you have truly solved that problem, you throw what I call "one dart".

You pitch them in exactly the way that your product delivers value in their world in the way that they want in their own words. You just use all the information you gained to tell them, "You know what? This is actually a good fit. Here's why what we do addresses your issue exactly the way that you want it."

All you have to do is really practice, listen carefully enough until you are at the point where you're convinced they should buy, then don't tell them about all your features, don't tell them about all your functionality and technology. Don't start telling them about your life story. Just take everything you've learned from them and translate it into how is my product solving this person's problem in the way that they care about, and then let's just talk about that. If you're able to do that, you're going to be able to be really good at sales.

A lot of technical people will be like, "I'm an entrepreneur. I'm just not a sales guy." Well, here's where sales and entrepreneurship are very closely related. In sales, if you know how to listen to people and really learn about their needs and build rapport and then pitch them effectively on how your product solves these problems, the only other thing you need to do to succeed is be okay with rejection and embrace it.

Be okay that if you're going to go out there and take a shot and connect with people and ask them about what their needs are and try to convince them to buy your product once you've been convinced that they should, some people always say "yes" but not all of them. A bunch of them will tell you "no". You have to figure out how to emotionally deal with that rejection and keep marching forward. You have to be able to actually embrace that rejection, because if you don't get any no's, you can't get any yes's. If you don't get people telling you "no", you won't be able to close deals.

Nobody has a perfect record here. Everybody has to deal with rejection and that's very much what entrepreneurship is all about. You can't just optimize for 100% hit rate of everything you do works because, you know what, just keep a normal job that's really well pre-defined if you're trying to optimize for comfort and want to avoid rejection.

If you're able to deal with rejection and you're able to actually be a really good listener before you start talking and trying to pitch people on your ideas or your product, you have everything you need to be good at sales, really.

I was talking to Patrick McKenzie, @patio11 as some people will know him, and he spent some time in our office down in Palo Alto. We were chitchatting about sales and here's a guy who in his personality is really nothing that you would consider a sales guy. Nothing about his person, nothing about the way he carries himself, nothing about the way he's dressed, his look, his haircut, nothing tells you, "Oh, this is a sleazy sales guy."

But he's a fu**ing sales machine because he figured out, "What are the basics of selling? This is not that hard. And this is actually useful and important." So he just gets the basics so he gets the job done and he's not apprehensive about it or dogmatic about it, but he's really pragmatic. Sales is something that helps, something needed in the world and it's actually easy to understand. Here's the five steps of how to actually do this so let me use it to propel my business and my products and the things that I'm doing forward.

Understanding what sales really is and understanding that you don't have to be an a**hole to sell and you don't have to be somebody that's a fast talker and that loves to hear themselves talk all the time to be successful in sales, busting these myths, I think, can help a lot with engineers embracing sales and not being so afraid of associating themselves with it.

The other thing is just realizing to a certain degree you have to just . . . In startups and entrepreneurship sometimes you'll have to do work you don't really fu**ing love because it's really, really important. You don't have to do it forever but in the early years it's really, really important for you to do it because you won't be able to scale something if you haven't really discovered what people truly care about and how to deliver that value to them and sales is a great way to do that because it kind of takes you out of your comfort zone of sitting on your couch with your laptop researching things on the Internet to having to go out in the real world, sit next to another human being or sometimes call them and tell them why you think what you have is really valuable and then listen to them telling you, "I don't care."

That's a lot more uncomfortable than saying, "Oh, I just had four clicks and our conversion rate is not optimal but . . ." All that sh** is pretty comfortable but I think to face real rejection from real people is something people don't enjoy and it sucks and it takes a lot of time but it can't be outsourced. It's really crucial. You have to be out there pitching your solution, learning from real people what they like and dislike and if you don't like that, you might find a way around it.

A lot of times if you're in the end consumer space and you develop some game that's a one-hit wonder or even a two-hit wonder, you've developed some app that gets massive viral traction, the rules there are different. But if you're in B2B, if you're selling to business or professionals, if you're building a SaaS product that people have to subscribe and pay monthly, if you're in that world, embracing the sales is going to help you be a better entrepreneur and build a better business.

Justin Mares:
Got it. Okay. You mentioned a couple different ways that entrepreneurs can approach sales. In your mind, what really separates the good salesman from a great one?

Steli:
That's a good question. Separates good people from great people? I do think that it really comes back to what I was saying before. Empathy, competitiveness and compassion. Great sales people are really competitive. We have a bunch of engineers in our team with Close.io, with the company that we're running, and our engineers are actually, at this point, by this time, are really good at sales, all of them, just because they've been exposed to it so much.

The difference between understanding or being good at sales, like being able to ask the right questions, practice and listen, figure out what people care about and then give it to them in an impactful way, that can be learned. That's something good salespeople do.

The other thing that good salespeople do is kind of figuring out how to go out and communicate effectively in a high frequency, so either do a lot of emails or a lot of calls, being out there networking, whatever. All that stuff can be done. The real difference between good one and great salespeople is consistency because here's the thing that sucks about sales: sales is very much kind of a competitive sport.

Let's take basketball. If you're a basketball pro, let's say you're Michael Jordan at your prime and you go out on the field and it's a new game and the clock starts, you don't get extra brownie points because you're Michael Jordan and you've been playing really well for the last four years. The score reads 0. You have to perform today. It doesn't matter what you did last week.

That's what makes sales really difficult is that it doesn't matter if you had a great sales week and you closed this huge deal and everybody high-fives you and you did an amazing job, it's Monday, it's a new day. What happened yesterday doesn't matter anymore; you have to perform again. If you don't, you're going to suffer and your company's going to suffer. You have to perform every single day.

That's really hard for most people. Most people have high highs and low lows. Some weeks they do a good job. Some weeks they do a bad job and they're inconsistent. The difference between great salespeople and good ones are not that the great ones have some kind of magical charisma and, yeah, there's some people that are really charismatic, yeah, there's some people that have some cool ideas and hacks and tactics, but the real difference between the good and great ones is consistency.

People that do it everyday, that show up everyday as if it's their first day and give it their all consistently over long, long periods of time and people that can bring it everyday, that's really the big difference.

Justin Mares:
Got it. We talked about earlier how startups can essentially scale through different sales stages, how it depends on the stage of the company and what you need to accomplish, all of that. When you're going from the startup phase, like it's just the founder calling his first couple customers and making sales, what do you do to scale up that process, especially if the founder doesn't consider him or herself a salesperson? How do you decide how to build a process, how to hire people, all of that stuff?

Steli:
Well, I think that you shouldn't worry about scaling that. All you should care about in the early days is finding things that work, discovering things that work and learning more about your market, your customers, your business model and the way to effectively deliver your value to your market, whatever that means.

So what you do is you try things and you see what the results are and you try to figure out if there's ways to improve the results. Then you see if the results are good enough so that they would warrant you building your business on top of them, even if it's just one channel of things you are considering doing for the long term, versus you doing certain other things that bring you zero results and you try to improve them and you can and then you just kill that as an option. You say, "This is not working for us so I'm going to stop worrying about it."

I think that the mistake I've seen too many very, very early founders do when they just start doing sales, they overthink things. Sales is not that different from product development. You overcomplicate things. You worry about how are we going to build the scalable infrastructure for a solution that nobody cares about. You're worrying about the wrong things.

I was talking to a founder today that has been doing sales for two or three months himself. He had some decent success and he's thinking about getting one or two junior people to join his team in his company in a sales and business development capacity and he was telling me he's been worrying about hiring people for the last six months and the reason why he hasn't started recruiting or hiring is because he's trying to come up with the perfect compensation plan for them, for his SaaS solution.

I was like, "Oh, cool, so what's the progress you've made in the last six months working on this compensation plan?" He laughed and said, "Well, I haven't really made any progress." I'm like, "Oh, cool. How many days in the last six months have you worried about this?" He's like, "Every single day I'm worrying about this."

We've all done this. This is insane. Don't worry about it. Just hire some people and be honest with them and tell them, "Listen, guys, this is not fu**ing IBM. I don't know what the solution is. I don't know what the right sales compensation model is. The benefit to you guys is not that this is the best sales job that's predefined and already working. The benefit and the reason why you guys should join is because you're going to learn how to develop these things. You're going to really learn how to build a startup, how to be entrepreneurial. We're going to develop these things together. We're going to find out what works and what doesn't."

"So I'm going to give you guys X in base salary and then hopefully in the next two or three months we'll find out a way to start with a simple bonus or commission structure and we're going to expand on it and you guys are going to be able to influence that together with me."

It's not about you figuring it out on your own in your head and then having the magical solution that at the first try is going to be perfect. It's about iteration, being okay making mistakes. You're going to make mistakes. Compensation structures are going to be wrong and you're going to have to revise them and change them constantly. The types of salespeople you hire are going to be wrong. Once you discover what really is your marketing, you're going to have to change it.

There's going to be so much change. Because you have to realize that your business is going to be constantly changing until you've figured it out completely, don't worry about the details so much. Done is better than perfect. Just get going. Try things, get some success. If it works and it works repeatedly, do more of it. If it works and doesn't work repeatedly, that's dangerous.

That's actually one of the most dangerous things is when you consistently perform in a certain way and get very inconsistent results. That's one of the most schizophrenic things for entrepreneurs because what the hell am I to decide now based on this data? Why is it working one month and it doesn't work the other months?

In sales a lot of times that has to do with not inconsistent pitching or salesmanship, but with inconsistent types of prospects and leads that you're generating. This is a topic for another full 30 minutes to discuss but my main point is don't worry so much. You're going to make mistakes, just like with anything else. Embrace it, be okay with it, and focus on the one thing that really matters is just learning and improvement, momentum.

Have we been smarter about sales this week than last week? That's the only thing that you should care about. If the answer every week is "yes", you're on the right trajectory. If the answer every week is "maybe", you could do better. If the answer is "no", you're in trouble.

Justin Mares:
Sure. That makes sense. To end, what is the single biggest thing that you see startups struggle with in terms of sales, especially in the early stages?

Steli:
That's a great question. There's many things but one thing that I can give that I think fits what most companies are going through is trying to make things work that don't work, like doing more of them and trying to scale things that are just inherently not scalable.

I'll give you an example. Lots and lots of startup, they'll close a bunch of deals on their first couple of customers through, let's say, investor referrals or just their network. You go to your friends, peers, people you know, people you know you know, and get references and referrals and close your first couple of customers that way, which is perfectly fine the way you should get going at the beginning.

But then what they do is they take those results and they just say, "Well, I closed 20 customers, let me hire 10 salespeople. Each of them should close 30 customers and we're going to be up and running." The question is, well, how did you close these people? Is that really repeatable? Can these people you hire get the same type of leads in the same type of way you did to create the same results?

Too many people don't really think this through. "Oh, sh**, no they can't." Okay, well, if they can't, what ways will you make available to them to actually create results? Where are the leads going to be coming from? Where are the prospects going to be coming from that these salespeople have to sell?

I think too many times startups get a little bit of results and they don't ask themselves, "Wait. Let me go back to the source that generated these results," which usually is leads, your leads, your prospects. Where did they get those from? Can I grow this source? Is this source really scalable? Is it a repeatable one? If I hire somebody can they tap into the same source or create a similar one for them?

If not, then there's no purpose in hiring lots and lots of salespeople. They're not going to have anything to do. They're not going to be able to do anything because you close your family and your grandparents. Okay, cool. How is that helping them in actually going and creating more results for you?

So I think that really asking yourself, "Are the results we're driving, are those repeatable? Can we consistently repeat them? Do we have a certain level of predictability? Do I know what kind of sales we're going to generate next week or next month?" If the answer is yes, yes they're predictable, yes they're repeatable, then the last question is, "Are they scalable? Can I grow this? Is this big enough so that I could hire another person doing this or two people?"

Only once you have a "yes" as an answer, it doesn't make sense to try to grow sales by hiring more people. A lot of startups make that mistake that they take results and they don't ask themselves, "Is this really repeatable? Is this really predictable and is it scalable? Can it grow? How big is this pool that I've created the results out of?"

Justin Mares:
That's fantastic. Well, dude, this has been great. Is there anything that you think we should cover before we wrap?

Steli:
A million things but no, I think we covered already a lot and you can tell I'm super passionate about this topic so I could talk on for hours. I think if people are interested to learn more about very specific B2B sales because that's the thing that I know and I teach and we practice everyday, you can go to http://blog.close.io. Close.io is our company. We write two, three articles a week. I try to write very technical things, how to negotiate discounts on your closed pre-paid deals, how do you price, really practical things. So if you enjoyed this session I think you'll enjoy the blog and that's probably a really good place.

The other thing is people can get in touch with me if they want to chitchat sales, I offer sales office hours to lots of people. Fifteen-minute sessions where we jump on Skype on a call and you tell me what you're doing and I'll try to be as helpful as possible.

People can always reach me at steli@close.io, if they want to say hi or book a sales office hour and chitchat.

Justin Mares:
Awesome, man. Well, this has been fantastic. Thanks again for doing the interview and we'll chat soon.

Steli:
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Justin Mares:
Cool.

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Keeping track of potential online leads and customers is no mean feat, even if you only have a handful. Social listening is a great way to get new leads but then what do you do with them? How do you store their information and contact details? How do you record conversations you have had with them? How do you know when to chase them up to close a sale?

We have all done it, lost a potential customers details or conversations. That customer could have been huge! Don’t lose a lead again because of sloppy mistakes, check out these lead management apps for marketers, sales people, telemarketers, social media managers, eCommerce business and more…

Great Apps for Marketing and Social Media:

LeadExec: Lead Management for Marketers

LeadExec is a management solution which has a simple-to-use platform, designed for marketers. Not many of us have shelves and filing cabinets full of files anymore (the rain forest thanks us!) so we have to store and organize our information digitally. LeadExec provides first class lead scoring, affiliate management, lead distribution, reporting and fabulous customer service. This great app provides a software solution for marketing teams to manage their online leads with efficiency. You have nothing to lose by signing up for their FREE trial.

Pardot: B2B Marketing Automation Suite

Pardot is part of Salesforce and therefore right up there with the big guys when it comes to managing your online leads, marketing and sales. Tracking your prospect interactions is a huge job which Pardot does extremely well. Automated lead nurturing and sales alerts give your team some much-needed spare time in which to perform other duties. Use Google Analytics visitor stats to separate the good prospects from the bad and know where to put your focus. Most importantly you can measure your ROI with closed-loop reporting. Get a Demo of what they do today.

ExactTarget: Marketing Cloud

ExactTarget is also part of Salesforce and is designed to manage your customers from prospect through to sale. They enable you to build relationships with your customers across mobile, web, email and social channels. Connection with customers on all platforms and levels is a strong point of ExactTarget and the opportunity to automate customer journeys in real-time is a huge benefit. Use it to build your B2B strategies and take advantage of their powerful features. With the added bonus of live tech support, even the biggest technophobes amongst us can use it. Check them out with this great Demo.

VanillaSoft: Lead Management Software

VanillaSoft is a lead management and CRM solution for telephone marketing businesses. This simple system encourages increased productivity, higher contact rates and sales accountability. The lead generation and nurturing allows a business to manage online leads from beginning to end. Special features of VanillaSoft include live dashboard, digital call recording, integrated email, progressive dialing and lead distribution. Give their FREE trial a go to see if it works for you.

Hatchbuck: Sales and Marketing Software

Hatchbuck is a CRM, sales and marketing automation service for an all-in-one experience. Designed specifically for small businesses Hatchbuck allows you to simplify your marketing so you can get on with other tasks. You can track all of your marketing and sales activities, as well as managing your leads and contacts with the easy-to-use CRM. Creating a revenue stream, lead nurturing, task management, auto responders and more are made simple with Hatchbuck. Have a look at their Demo to find out more.

Great Apps for eCommerce and Sales:

Zoho CRM: Flexible CRM for Small Business

Zoho CRM allows companies to build customer relations, manage round the world sales and provide great customer service. Track your leads and prospects, grab business opportunities and close those sales in a shorter time with Zoho CRM. You can also automate your marketing efforts, plan your marketing strategies and improve your lead generation. Measuring your successes has never been easier with this great CRM and with its Salesforce integration you will never miss a prospect again. Check out the Zoho CRM FREE trial to see if it is the right fit for you.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: The World’s #1 Sales and CRM App

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a force to be reckoned with (please excuse the pun) in this fast moving world of online lead management. Being a cloud-based app means there is no software to install when using Salesforce Sales Cloud. It connects the next generation of software and devices to make an instant connection with your leads. Using this platform means you can change your mobile device into a mobile office and never miss a prospect again. If you are not sure this is the one for you, give their FREE trial a go to be sure.

Insightly: The Leading CRM for Small Business

Insightly was originally made for Google Apps so its integration makes life a whole lot easier if you use Google Docs, Drive, Calendar or Gmail. You don’t necessarily need Google Apps to use Insightly, you can sign up on the web app too. Insightly’s strong points are the ability to link your related items from employees to customers and projects to tasks. You can also gather all your customer information in one place including phone calls, emails and meetings. You can sign up for a FREE account with Insightly today.

Salesformics: Simple CRM and all-inclusive Marketing Automation

Salesformics is a customer relationship manager combines with sales and marketing for the convenience of having everything in one place. You can nurture and manage your leads as well as managing your marketing and sales. Salesformics integrates with Twitter, LinkedIn, Buffer, Constant Contact, Evenbrite, Dropbox, Campaign Monitor and more. Their mission is to make your life simpler with an easy-to-use system that anyone can manage. Check out their FREE trial here.

Infusionsoft: Sales and Marketing Automation for Small Business

Infusionsoft is a complete lead scoring, customer management, email, marketing and sales platform designed for SMBs. The CRM allows you to effectively manage your customer information and nurture your leads until they become a sale. The Marketing feature helps you to make leads through email and social media, building personalized communications with your customers. Its eCommerce capabilities allow you to manage your online stores and the automation means you will never lose a lead again. Watch the Infusionsoft Demo.

Of course these fabulous apps are multi-functional, most cover all bases, you just need to find the one that’s right for you and your business. Use our comparison tool to compare them with each other and check out our marketplace for a whole list of lead management software for even more outstanding options.

Any questions about lead management? Ask us, you never know we may be able to help!

It’s awards season here at Econsultancy as the entries detailing inspirational case studies from a huge range of companies continue to roll in.

The Digitals 2014 are designed to showcase the finest work from the global digital and ecommerce community, but not just from individuals, we want to put the whole team centre stage in order to celebrate and truly reflect the collaborative culture of our industry.

You have till 10 September 2014 to enter, and in order to give you inspiration for your own entry we’ve rounded up some of the best B2B case studies we received in 2013.

For more advice on how to write your entry, read David Moth’s 10 tips for writing a stand out awards entry for The Digitals.

Kern & Sohn

The objective for scales manufacturer Kern & Sohn was to grow its reputation and revenue in the education and laboratory sectors. But how does a company achieve global reach by making the rather dry subject of precision weighing fascinating? 

Enter the gnome.

Working with OgilvyOne, Kern & Sohn used a twist on the travelling gnome prank. Gnomes are of course(!?) well-known for globe-trotting, so they equipped one with a Kern Scale and packed him in a flight case.

Scientists were charmed by the spirit of the project (it certainly stood out from the offer-lead corporate communications they typically receive) and they sought to participate.

Once they received the gnome, they happily escorted him to landmarks for photos – they even sent him from one laboratory to another, from the South Pole to the CERN particle collider.  

As the gnome travelled, each world-famous institution acted as a highly credible endorsement for Kern.

Perhaps the most value the experiment brought to Kern & Sohn was a personality. Becoming world-famous for sending a little gnome around the world certainly differentiates them from the many faceless science equipment companies they compete with.

The results:

• Within two days the story had reached an audience of over 355m in 152 countries, with three requests every minute from people wanting to weigh the gnome. 
• After one month 16,386 websites had linked to GnomeExperiment.com, pushing Kern to the first Google SERP for ‘precision scales’ in all five key markets (up from an average of page 12) resulting in a 21% sales uplift and a 1042% ROI.
• There was even a TED talk all about the experiment and several countries added The Gnome Experiment to their curriculum. 

Berwin Leighton Paisner

The law firm BLP wanted to hire 40 graduates but felt it was either unheard of or unfavoured by students. Many students also had no idea why they should even consider a career in law. It’s objectives were simple:

• With lower brand awareness and less budget than rivals, it needed to create a bigger online stir and get students talking about BLP.  
• To win hearts and minds by painting an amazing future at BLP for students.

These objectives were achieved by:

• Theming the entire campaign around the ‘amazing things’ students could achieve as a lawyer at BLP.
• Making its people the hero, letting them tell the real story of life at BLP on an unfettered basis via video, an interactive microsite and blogs. 
• Running a ‘Do amazing things’ social media competition to create a buzz about BLP

The results began to show within months:

• Applications for trainee job schemes up 40%.
• The campaign Klout score - which measures online social media influence and sentiment – overtook all its rivals.
• Twitter followers tripled.
• Facebook likes more than doubled.
• Web traffic from Google doubled in the first month of employing SEO.
• With less than £300 invested, Facebook advertising targeted at university students saw exposure of BLP’s Facebook page and the ‘Amazing Things’ Twitter competition grow from 1,014 people to 20,542 in just four weeks, with click-throughs growing from 11 in week one to 640 in week four.
• City and trade press got hold of the campaign and covered it – the video campaign was featured in business newspaper City AM and the campaign blog was featured by influential trade site The Lawyer2B.

RS Components

Although RS Components operates a significant offline B2B operation, it recognised the need to build an online business of comparable success.

Working with Greenlight, the objectives were as follows: 

• To deliver a 300% increase in SEO visibility in Google within just 3 months 
• To find a way to intelligently assess and release the latent SEO value of their huge inventory 
• To achieve this utilising ethical SEO methods and limited support from internal RS teams 

Given these timescales and ambitions, Greenlight took a ‘data first’ approach, utilising its technology to determine where time and effort should be applied for maximum return, in the shortest time frame.  

This was facilitated by Greenlight’s proprietary Hydra platform. Hydra utilises unique, patent-pending algorithms allowing the agency to manage and manipulate huge keyword lists, understand the opportunity they represent, and what is required to make them drive profitable, commercial value. 

This helped drive returns six months earlier than average SEO campaigns and with a negligible impact on the internal resources of RS Components.

Targets were exceeded by more than four times with a 1,300% improvement in visibility in Google’s organic search results, generating over 1,000% more SEO revenue than the site was previously achieving, representing £12m of incremental revenue from that channel.

Liberty London 

The department store worked with Ve Interactive to create a cart recovery, remarketing and optimisation campaign to maximise online conversions, supporting Liberty’s objective of being able to go direct-to-consumer and gain insight to foster relationships with all its traffic. 

The company discovered that 62% of abandonments were occurring on the registration/login page, in response to compulsory registration required, prior to purchase. 

To combat this, the following measures were implemented:

• Immediate modification of checkout process & creation of ‘guest checkout’.
• Installed VeCapture to recover data on a field-by-field basis.
• Remarketing began through behaviour-driven email programmes, responding to the difficulty customers were having with the register/login requests. 
• Simultaneously ran bespoke product feed campaigns for additional 31% of ‘anonymous’ customers who hadn’t tried to register or log in. This began increasing Liberty’s client base. 

The results:

• Average remarketing emails sent per month grown an average of 1524.75%, with highest month peaking at 3387.63% 
• Average Open rate per month grown an average of 5.25%, the highest month peaking at 10.19% 
• Average Clicks per month grown an average of 569.07%, the highest month peaking at 1020.62% 
• Average Conversions per month grown an average of 542.86%, the highest month peaking at 1078.57% 
• Average revenue per month grown an average of 676.46%, the highest month peaking at 1239.04%

Glenigan 

Working with Adido, the UK based provider of construction project leads and industry analysis, attempted a strategic website redesign and digital marketing revamp. 

The objectives were to position Glenigan as the market leaders for construction insight online by the following means: 

• Increase online website enquiries by 10%
• Improve website accessibility across all internet enabled devices
• Drive engagement with existing customers 

To achieve this Adido established critical user profiles including understanding on how they would find the site, use it and access it. It also created a competitor review from a creative, usability and functional website viewpoint to understand the current industry benchmarks. 

The Glenigan consumer was placed at the heart of the redesign via mood boards and wire frames. User journeys were planned to simplify navigation and maximise enquiries. SEO was built into all initial design considerations as well as templates for mobile and tablet devices.

The results:

• Website enquiries have increased by 20%, growing 50% more than target
• Mobile & tablet visits to the site have increased by 162%
• Pages viewed by these devices has increased by 106%
• Enquiries from mobile & tablet devices have increased by 775%
• Mobile app downloads have now exceeded 3800
• SEO traffic from mobile and tablet devices up 69%
• Non brand mobile SEO traffic up by 90%
• Target keywords ranking in top 3 up by 281%
• PPC traffic up by 15%

MSD

The global healthcare company sought to create relevant healthcare provider (HCP) engagement and sustained portal traffic through fast delivery and precision targeting of its wealth of content.

Working with CreatorMail it launched a self-learning eCRM email engagement programme by digitally and dynamically publishing content. It additionally manages email frequency tailored to members’ behaviour and observed engagement data; using clear and sticky designs to promote emerging content appropriate to a HCP’s medical specialty.

Members’ activity is combined on the Univadis portal (through web analytics data) and observed email engagement to drive the frequency and content strategy. HCPs’ time is limited so dynamic emails serve up content to the user as the content happens ensuring maximum ‘share of attention’.

As members start to lapse, fully automated multi-touch reactivation messaging and frequency variations kick in, lifting engagement back up while directing recipients back to the most popular content modules in their chosen specialty. In the UK, 35% of the base was reactivated in seven months.

Optimised eCRM content for multiple devices led to a 64% increase in engagement of Univadis emails on portable devices.

124m Univadis emails were delivered globally; member growth rate of 3% per month, with most countries retaining over 95% opt in or higher. 

Enter The Digitals and showcase your finest work, your team and your clients to the global digital marketing and ecommerce community.

For more inspiration, check out these seven email marketing case studies from The Digitals.

Is it necessary to pre-qualify inbound leads? That’s the overarching question I recently presented to a panel of industry experts. Over the course of this three part series, you’ll hear from 15 leading voices in the world of sales, marketing and lead generation, as they share their insight in response to the following questions:

• Are companies wise to invest money and time to pre-qualify inbound leads from marketing automation systems that have been assigned a “perfect” lead score?
• Should CMOs feel confident that these leads from marketing automation are ready for sales to close
• Without additional qualification measures (such as tele-qualifying), will these leads inevitably clog and choke the sales pipeline?

We started the first series hearing from author and consultant Ardath Albee; entrepreneur Kyle Porter; author and consultant Joanne Black; and consultant and speaker Dave Brock.

In the second part of the series, we heard from The Funnelholic’s Craig Rosenberg; Annuitas Group’s Carlos Hidalgo; Sales Lead Management Association’s Jim Obermayer; Direct Marketing News’ Ginger Conlon; consultant and trainer Dave Stein; and agency founder Matt Heinz.

We are now approaching the third and final part of this series, where we will hear from Connect & Sell’s Chad Burmeister; consultant and professor Ruth Stevens; sales guru Chris Tratar; Care.com’s Chris Snell; and finally, cleaning up is 60-Second Marketer’s founder and CEO, Jamie Turner.

Now, to the experts:

Chad Burmeister – “Leads that come from online marketing may not be all that good.”

It depends on several factors. If a company has a way to classify leads into buckets such as “A”, “B”, “C” leads, then the A leads (AKA, the “website contact me now” leads) can be transferred directly to sales. The B & C leads (the bulk of the leads) should be pre-qualified by a Lead Qual team.

Some highly tuned sales teams such as WebEx, Act-On (ex-leaders from WebEx), and other world class companies that have identified “A Leads” can absolutely pass them to sales. Caveat – the speed of follow-up and a sufficient number of touches (including the utilization of Advanced Sales Acceleration from Connect & Sell) are required to efficiently and effectively work leads.

Chad knows how to sell! I don’t actually believe any leads (including what he refers to as the “A” leads from marketing automation) should be sent directly to sales without pre-qualification. Chad does make the point, however, that certain organizations can put a higher degree of trust in scoring, and offers some insight into how the process should work, as well.

Ruth Stevens – Author of Maximizing Lead Generation

It all comes down to math. If the so-called qualified leads turn out not to close at the desired rate, or produce the desired ROI, then setting up additional qualification processes should be tested. But that approach does not factor in the potential fallout of asking sales counterparts to participate in such an experiment. If marketing leadership has concerns about wasting the time and good will of the sales team, then I’d suggest a pre-test of these auto-qualified leads, using a separate group to test their validity.

Ruth is, as usual, looking at outcomes and the bottom of the funnel—not just the top. I also like that Ruth is consistently a fan of testing. Testing is one of the most effective, efficient things marketers can do; unfortunately, it is largely ignored in most companies, including the biggest of companies.

Chris Tratar – Why Sales Enablement is NOT Content Management

When it comes to pre-qualifying leads, you should always hand sales leads that are as qualified as possible because your sales reps need to be as efficient and effective as possible. More qualified leads also ensure that less pipeline will fall out. The key to passing any lead from marketing to sales is to ensure that your sales team gets the right coaching, materials and enablement at the right time to have the next successful conversation.

Chris Tratar takes the process beyond lead generation. His recommendation about the sales team getting the right coaching, materials, and enablement at the right time is really great advice and very additive to this conversation:

Chris Snell – On PowerViews Video Blog

I believe that there always has been, and always will be, room for tele-qualification on any lead. I don’t think we’ve reached SkyNet levels yet, where the machines are completely doing our jobs. I think all of the inbound tools that marketers and sellers have to use at their disposal are fantastic, and they have certainly changed the selling landscape. However, although inbound leads from marketing automation tools are great, I do not think that there is a substitute for actual conversations.

In his role, Chris Snell has a unique bird’s eye view on inside sales and makes valuable points from that perspective.

Finally, my clean-up man, Jamie Turner, who has written books on this and other related subjects, provides the three stages (Flood, Science and Art) companies go through as they grow more sophisticated in using marketing automation. I think you will find his insight very helpful:

Jamie Turner – 30-page Mobile Marketing Report (two-question registration page)

I’ve found that there are three different stages companies go through when it comes to marketing automation.

The first is the Flood Stage where companies flood their database with too much information too quickly. This, of course, generates less-than-stellar results. I’d guess about 50% of the companies stop at this stage because they think that’s all there is to marketing automation.

The second stage is the Science Stage. That’s when companies realize that they can use statistics to optimize and improve their results. About 40% of the companies that use marketing automation get stuck in the Science Stage. It’s not a bad place to get stuck because the results are satisfactory, but it’s not ideal.

The final stage is the Art Stage. I call it that because there’s an art to pre-qualifying a sales ready lead. Only about 10% of the companies that start out in marketing automation get this far, but it’s where the gold is. When someone pre-qualifies a lead before sending it along to the sales team, they can 1) keep the sales team engaged and motivated, and 2) improve the ROI of their campaigns.

The bottom line? Don’t get stuck in the Flood or the Science stages. Keep going until you get to the Art stage. That’s where you’ll generate the best results.

To recap, here’s a compilation of excerpts from each of the 15 experts, across the entire three-part series:

1. “Prequalifying leads that have reached a scoring threshold in marketing automation is critical” (Ardath Albee).
2. “There is no such thing as a ‘marketing automation lead’” (Kyle Porter).
3. “… most leads generated from a company’s marketing automation system are not ready for sales” (Joanne Black).
4. “…high quality lead scoring and possibly some level of tele-qualifying might be required to produce quality sales ready leads” (Dave Brock).
5. “Do not ‘set and forget’ marketing automation scoring” (Ginger Conlon).
6. “We would never ask a customer to trust any output from any of our solutions without ‘running parallel’” (Dave Stein).
7. “… unfortunately, messy lead scoring methodologies also typically lead to salespeople missing or ignoring the good leads that are hidden in the stack somewhere” (Matt Heinz).
8. “I believe that 100% of leads should flow through a sales development engine” (The Funnelholic – Craig Rosenberg).
9. “… a personal interaction that signifies when a buyer is ready to pull the lever and can only be garnered by a human talking to another human” (Carlos Hidalgo).
10. “Everyone in the organization, especially marketing, must understand the difference between a sales lead and an inquiry” (from Jim Obermayer’s new book, Managing Sales Leads).
11. “Caveat: the speed of follow-up and a sufficient number of touches are required to efficiently and effectively work leads (Chad Burmeister).
12. “If so-called qualified leads turn out not to close at the desired rate then additional qualification should be tested (Ruth Stevens).
13. “The key to passing any lead from marketing to sales is to ensure that the sales team gets the right coaching, materials and enablement at the right time” (Chris Tratar).
14. “I believe there always has been, and always will be, room for tele-qualification on any lead” (Chris Snell).
15. “The Art Stage. Only about 10% of the companies that start out in marketing automation get this far… but it’s where the gold is (Jamie Turner).

There you have it, folks. If you’ve been with us the whole way, you’ve heard the viewpoints of fifteen of the finest in B2B sales, marketing and lead generation. How have their views influenced yours?

Above: Toyota concept car

Imagine a smooth, quiet, comfortable largish sedan that emits nothing with a range of 250 miles or more; one that pegs its driver as a person in the vanguard of advanced technology vehicles.

That sounds like the Tesla Model S electric car, you say?

No, no, no, that would be Toyota’s upcoming hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle, on sale next year.

Today, the dedicated sedan model is known only as the “Fuel Cell Sedan.”

Many years in development, it will be sold in North America, Japan, and Europe, with the company projecting volumes of perhaps 25,000 a year globally after 2020.

Meanwhile, leasing began in June for the 2015 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell crossover. Honda is also expected to launch a next-generation hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle sometime after Toyota.

In addition to a new model name, expect a new nameplate. The sale price will also be one of the most closely watched aspects of Toyota’s first fuel-cell car.

In June, Toyota said the hydrogen-powered Fuel Cell Sedan will carry a price of “approximately 7 million yen” before tax (roughly $68,700).

It will go on sale in Japan next spring, but only in regions where hydrogen fueling infrastructure has already been installed.

Back in May 2010, Toyota said it would put its hydrogen vehicle on sale in the U.S. in 2015, for a price of $50,000.

In their early years, analysts say, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles will serve as compliance cars so carmakers can meet California zero-emission vehicle sales requirements. That means volumes will be low.

But the Toyota sedan — and likely the Honda hydrogen vehicle that will follow it — seem most comparable to the Tesla Model S electric luxury sedan.

Tesla has already built more than 50,000 Model S cars and is selling the zero-emission vehicles in North America, Europe, and China.

Sound familiar?

But whether the Toyota Fuel Cell Sedan proves to be a direct competitor for the Tesla Model S or is considered by entirely different buyers, it’s important to understand that the two cars serve very different roles.

As it did in the early years of its Prius hybrid, Toyota will likely lose significant amounts of money on every hydrogen vehicle it sells.

So the vehicle’s U.S. pricing will be based largely on where it thinks the car can sit in the market for advanced-tech cars. Losing less money would be nice, but that’s likely not the driving force.

Tesla, on the other hand, has to sell its Model S cars at a profit, to fund development of its future models. Unlike Toyota, it has no base of highly profitable gasoline vehicles to subsidize its research and development.

So we anticipate that you may see the fuel-cell Toyota positioned considerably above the high end of the Prius range, but rather below the $69,900 starting price of a Model S.

Recent ads from Toyota and Lexus have stressed the disadvantages of diesel and plug-in electric cars. So the marketing for Toyota’s hydrogen car may make comparisons to unnamed luxury battery-electric vehicles, stressing range anxiety, the length of time it takes to recharge, and so forth.

And if we had to lay money (just a small amount), we could imagine the Toyota Fuel Cell Sedan carrying a U.S. price of either $49,900.

But we’d bet the early ones will only be available for lease.

We’ll likely learn the answers within six to nine months.

_______________________________________________

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This story originally appeared on Green Car Reports.

Tesla's goal is to accelerate the world's transition to electric mobility with a full range of increasingly affordable electric cars. Palo Alto, California-based Tesla designs and manufactures EVs and EV powertrain components. Tesla ha... read more »

A Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. In 2010, Toyota employed 300,734 people worldwide, and was the third-largest automobile manufacturer in 2011 by production behind General Motors and Volkswagen G... read more »